Soft touch (10 page)

He sat in the kitchen while I went down to the coal bin. This time I used work gloves to unstack the wood. When the suitcase was cleared I opened it and took out twenty-nine bundles of hundreds and tucked them neatly into the place where the suitcase had been. I restacked the wood and threw the work gloves aside and carried the suitcase back up to the kitchen. It was considerably lighter and easier to manage.

"I suppose you want to check."

"If it isn't too much trouble."

"Suppose she comes down?"

"I don't think she will, and neither do you."

I opened it. He counted it carefully. "Okay."

He put his dark glasses on and we went to the car. He got in awkwardly. I put the two bags in the back. I could have driven through town, but I took the long way around. It was just six o'clock when I turned off the narrow county road into the driveway that dropped steeply down to the lakeshore camp. I knew the camp well. E. J. had built it right after he and Edith were married. And he had done a damn good job. He had built it to last. In the first couple of summers of our marriage

Lorraine and I had gone up there whenever we could. I remembered one hot August night when we were alone in the camp. We had been to a barn dance in the village. At about three in the morning, under a full moon, we'd gone skinny-dipping in the black water of the lake. I remembered how whitely she had gleamed in the water, remembered carrying her up to the camp, to the big old double bed, dripping wet and shivering deliriously in my arms.

I wondered where and why it had all gone so wrong.

"A revolting name," Vince said.

E. J. had named it Sootsus. I had become so accustomed to the name that I had forgotten how sickening it was.

I parked in the turnaround behind the camp. I carried the two bags to the shallow porch, put them down and went over and got the key from its usual place tucked behind an edge of the windowframe.

"When you leave, put the key back there."

"Righto."

I brought in the cardboard carton of groceries I had bought on the way up. I found the fuse box and closed the two knife switches and said, "Yank the power off when you leave."

"Check."

"Try to stay out of sight. It's pretty secluded, but some of the neighbors might be in early. Don't light it up like a church at night."

"Okay."

I couldn't think of anything else. I turned to say good-by. He was leaning heavily against the kitchen table, the little Jap automatic pointed at my chest.

"What the hell?"

"Good-by and all that," he said. "I just don't want you any closer than you are right now. You are getting too cute and too hungry too fast, Jerry. And there's a hell of a lot of money in the next room, and that is a deep lake. So we carried it off, and this is the end of it. For some funny reason I don't trust you any more. I don't 76

trust you at all. So don't get some cute ideas and try to come back here, Jerry."

"It never entered my head."

"But it might. Don't be tempted. Adios, amigito."

"And good-by and bad luck to you, bastard."

And I marched out and drove off, gunning the wagon up the steep drive, feeling it weave as the rear wheels slipped. I was back home a little before seven. Dusk was on its way. The heat bugs sang in the elms and fancy plantings of Tyler Drive.

A half tray of ice cubes were melting in the kitchen. Smoke wreathed upward from a smoldering lipsticked butt. I listened in the upstairs hall. The bedroom radio was on. The door was locked. I went down and used the melting ice with enough bourbon to fill a tall glass. I wandered upstairs with the tall glass. I went into the guest room. I looked at the rumpled bed. I picked up the glass she had knocked over. A piece as big as half a silver dollar had been knocked out of the rim. There was a damp stain on the dark blue rug.

You can be reasonably certain of something, and yet have the ability to force it out of your mind, to tell yourself it never really happened, it was just your imagination and jealousy.

But not this time.

Not this unmistakable time.

And I didn't know why it should hurt so badly. I had thought I was out of love with her, completely. It shouldn't hurt this way. Not this sick shame and pain that makes you want to drive your fist into the wall.

Anyway, what did I have to kick about? Wasn't this just another Tyler Drive pastime? Did I think the quickie with Tinker was epochal or something? The saucy goose deserves a propaganda. So Vince rolled in the hay with a bored, petulant, spoiled housewife who was making the most of her looks before alcohol took the last of her freshness and prettiness. It shouldn't mean any more to me than it did to Vince. Or to her.

I finished the bourbon. It was getting to me. I made another one. I went and knocked on the bedroom door.

I knocked and knocked. She opened it. She stood swaying in a flowered robe, and looked at me with blurred face, sneering expression and said, "So come in, if you're so damn anxious."

And I went in.

Chapter 8

I walked directly across the bedroom and sat down on her dressing table bench heavily, so heavily some of the bourbon slopped out onto the back of my hand and wrist.

"Lover boy is gone," I said.

She peered at me. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Did you expect him to stay?"

"He's too sick to go. Where'd he go? Wha'd you do with Vince?"

"Took him to the airport."

"Where is he going?"

"I didn't ask. You want to follow him?"

"I might just as well follow him as stay here. With a damn sneaky sneak."

"I tell you I did not sneak."

She sat on the foot of her bed, facing me. "You did so sneak. I would have heard the car. I was listening."

"I ran out of gas about two blocks away."

"A likely story. A very likely story!"

"You can ask Irene. I met her while I was carrying gas back to the car. I drove her back to the main bus stop."

She squinted her eyes at me. "You really ran outa gas?"

"Yes."

"Then it was just bad luck. Just stinking bad luck, thass all."

She looked like a guilty and rebellious child. "Lorraine."

"Yeah?"

"Lorraine, honey, why do you make such a mess of everything? Why do you drink yourself stupid? Why did you do that today with Vince?"

She made a helpless gesture with her free hand. "Why do people do anything? It wouldn't hurt anything, would it? He wouldn't say anything. I wouldn't say anything. So what's the harm in a little fun?"

The bourbon had made me feel very solemn, quite pontifical.

"That is an immoral attitude," I said.

"You're a stuffy bassar, aren't you?"

"Why do you drink so much?"

"Because I like to drink so much. That's why I drink so much. And what'd you send Irene home for? I'm hungry."

"Lorraine, honey, we ought to try to understand each

other better."

"Go ahead. Understand me. Tell me what I'm like. You caught me, didn't you. Gives you a big free ticket to give me a big free lecture. Go ahead. You caught me. It makes me feel kind of ashamed you caught me, but you ought to feel good. Forgive the poor sinner. Say prayers maybe. Like Irene."

"Don't be so defensive. I'm trying to talk calmly."

"Be calm and superior."

"That's the point. I'm not superior. I ... I haven't been faithful either."

"Now you admit it! That washed-out Liz Addams. I knew it all the time, but you kept denying—"

"Not Liz Addams, Lorraine. Your friend Tinker."

"Tinker!" she gasped. "Where? When?"

"Last Sunday. After dark. In her house."

She looked at me with complete shock and consternation. I expected her to break into tears. And she broke into an uncontrollable fit of giggling.

"Oh my God. Tinker! Oh, brother. Oh, the fun I'm going to have with her."

"Shut up!" I yelled at her. "You're not even human!"

She stood up, wavering and snickering, and headed for the bathroom. I ran after her and caught her by the arm

at the doorway. "What's wrong with you?" I yelled into her face. "You ought to see a psychiatrist. You've got some kind of a disease. You act as if . . . adultery was some kind of a game."

She wrenched her arm free and looked up at me. "Well, of course," she cooed. "Of course, darling. It is a game. A wonnerful, wonnerful game." She unbelted her robe so that it hung apart, did an ugly parody of a bump and grind and said, "Soon's I see a dog about a girl, we'll make ourselves comfy and exchange names. I bet I win. I got a hell of a long list. Ooooh, brother, have I ever got a long list."

I looked down into the filth of her face and the filth of her smile and the filth of her eyes. And called her the foulest name that came to mind. She raked my face with her nails. I put my right hand on the side of her face and thrust her into the bathroom with all my strength.

It was a floor-length robe when it was belted. It hung longer at the sides when unbelted. I believe that the first involuntary step she took, the first sideways step was onto the hem of the robe. It tripped her perfectly so that she left her feet completely, turning in the air slightly toward her own left so that she had no chance of getting her hands in front of her. The tub is in direct line with the doorway. Her head struck the tub with such a terrible force that it rang like a great muffled gong. She lay on her back with her head turned too far to the side, at a sickening and impossible angle. Her nails scrabbled listlessly at the tiled floor. Her body tensed in a great rippling shudder, then collapsed into a stillness and small-ness. Her eyes were half open. She looked small as a child. And with a dreadful stillness. The bright fluorescence of the bathroom lights made it all a special horror. My only instinct was to turn the light out. The last gray of the day was at the window.

I went back into the bedroom. I sat at her dressing table and looked in the mirror. I was breathing with great shuddering breaths and suddenly I could hear in the room the rasping noise of my own breath. I saw the three scratches on my cheek. The middle one was longest 80

and deepest. A single drop of blood ran from the middle gouge down to the angle of my jaw. It clung there, drying. In the mirror I saw the drink in my hand. I set it aside.

Then I knew that of course I had been wrong. Knocked her out. That's all. In a little while she'd come wobbling out, cursing me.

So I went into the bathroom and knelt carefully on the tile and laid my ear on her chest, knowing I would hear the slow thump of her heart. And heard a monstrous silence.

I went back into the bedroom and snatched up my drink, then put it down again. I crossed to the bedroom phone on her night stand and sat on her bed and picked up the phone. I heard the dial sound. I listened to it for several seconds. You dialed zero. Then you asked for the police. Then you said, I just sort of pushed her a little.

I hung up the phone and dried the palms of my hands on her bedspread.

Think, damn it! Pull yourself up out of the liquor stupor and the shock and start thinking. She is dead. Gone. Finished. Muerto. A stiff, a cadaver—something for the meat wagon, the embalming fluid and some organ music.

Take your choice, Jamison. Phone the cops right now and take a chance on some justice and mercy and maybe a minimum of three years for manslaughter. Or bitch up the evidence and take a chance on getting out whole.

And how about the money under the wood pile?

And what about the questions that are going to be asked about Vincente Biskay?

Get cold, Jamison. Get cold and logical and objective. And think. Think of all the angles.

Bar of soap on the floor. Rub some on the bottom of her foot. Press it against the tile and make a long smear of soap. Leave water running in the sink. Get the hell out. Establish an alibi. Come back and find her.

But they'd have some cute ideas about the angle of the fall, the force, the way the soap should have skidded. Might be worth a try if she hadn't gouged you. They'll clean under her fingernails, dig out the little flecks of tis-

sue she tore out of your cheek, and find enough blood to type.

Start the big run tonight. Take the cash and start moving fast.

And then they'll really be after you. No, you have to leave clean. Be trouble enough without that kind of pressure.

Be so much better if she could leave.

And that idea had a curious flavor of plausibility about it. I turned it around and around to see where and how it would fit.

And made it fit.

A big affair with Vince. A quarrel. (That was when she gouged me.) And then the two of them ran away together.

It would fit Vince's history. And her reputation.

But I couldn't go off half cocked. I had to sit and go over every aspect, and build a plan, and check the plan from every direction, from every angle.

And as I was beginning to sell myself on it, I happened to remember something that would make it perfect. Might make it perfect. If I could find it. If the wording was right. If it was the way I remembered it.

Way back in the marriage when the quarrels had been violent, when it had hurt when she had savaged me, before our scenes had become routine, there had been one particularly unpleasant quarrel. I could not even remember what it was about but she had left me forever. When I came home from work I had found her note. She had scrawled it on the flyleaf of a book I had been reading, had left the book propped open in the middle of the living room rug for me to find.

I went downstairs. It took a few minutes to find the book. I remembered that after we had made our fragile peace, she had wanted to cut the flyleaf out, but I had decided to keep it. I remembered having the vague idea that it might become useful ammunition in the event of another quarrel.

I took the book over to the lamp and read in her slanty green-ink scrawl, the i's dotted with little circles: 82

"Jerry—This is no damn good for either of us. I'm leaving for good this time. Don't try to find me. I won't be back." It was signed with one initial, a sprawling L.

I could not remember that anyone else knew of the note. I remembered that I had read of scientific methods which could determine the age of ink. This had been written over six years ago. But it looked crisp and fresh.