The Four Johns (11 page)

“I mean with the people. Hell, their lot hasn't improved in six thousand years. Ethiopians are human, aren't they? Just like you and me.”

Mervyn asked gravely, “You going to teach them photography?”

Frank Viviano gave him a suspicious look. “Why not? Pictures have a universal appeal. They'll go nuts over photos of Aunt Minnie making hyena soup, Rover chasing a baboon, Junior trying out his first spear.”

Mervyn glanced at his watch. “That picture of Mary Hazelwood in the foyer—was it taken here?”

“Where else? With a long lens on the Mamiyaflex. She's a natural beauty. Nice kid. You a friend of hers?”

“I know her.”

John Viviano's brother barked his dark laugh. “She's got John on the run, but good. When he starts goddamning a dame, I know he's hooked. He's susceptible—that's how he got into this business. It attracts a lot of queers, but John's all man. He takes a job where he can handle women, because that's what he likes to do best.”

“You're his partner?”

“Partner, manager, errand boy, floor mat. I also do most of the work. John is the woman handler. How he loves to handle women.” Viviano raised his head. “That's him now.”

John Viviano came in jauntily. He stopped abruptly at sight of Mervyn. He set a camera bag down, came over to the bench and stared at the camera his brother was fixing. “That monstrous old Deardorff.”

“We need a big view,” grunted the older man. “Takes good pictures.”

“I'm glad you like it. I think it's a dinosaur.”

“If a dinosaur can make me a good big negative, I'll use a dinosaur.”

At this point John Viviano turned his attention to Mervyn. “What brings you here, Gray?” His voice was not unfriendly.

“I want your help,” said Mervyn.

Viviano glanced at him sharply, then at his watch. “Come upstairs. I'm in a hurry, but there's time for a drink.”

He took Mervyn up a narrow staircase into a sunny parlor with white walls, a red carpet, a green Empire sofa and an ornate gilt mirror. “Scotch? Bourbon?”

“Bourbon.”

Viviano went into a pantry, returned with a pair of glasses. “Been here long?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“You talk much to my brother Frank?”

“Some.”

“What did Frank have to say?”

Who's pumping whom? Mervyn thought. “Nothing of any consequence,” he said carelessly. “About the Peace Corps, mostly.”

John Viviano began to stride back and forth. “They'd never take him. He's a crackpot. Full of screwy ideas. Well, Gray, what's on your mind?”

“Mary Hazelwood.”

“Dear Mary. You saw the photograph?”

“Yes. Well … to be candid, John, I'm in love with her.”

“Who isn't? So?” Viviano snapped his fingers impatiently.

“She's gone off somewhere, and I'm worried. She hasn't communicated even with Susie. I thought you might have some idea where she is.”

Viviano laughed, thrusting his head forward like a snake. “Why don't you say what you mean? No, I'm not the ‘John.' Some other John is the ‘John.' Whoever he is, I envy him. I'm in love with Mary, too.”

Mervyn tried to look earnest. “I believe you, Viviano. But Mary doesn't know too many Johns. Let's face facts.”

“As many as you like. I am without sensitivity.”

“Our ‘John,' now. Suppose he's married. Or has some other reason for wanting to keep his affair with Mary secret.”

John Viviano stopped in his tracks. “So?”

“So, when I come around asking questions about Mary, he denies everything.”

The photographer said in an ugly voice, “So?”

“You won't be offended if I ask where you were last Friday evening?”

“I will not be offended, no. But I will decline to answer.”

“I only want to eliminate the name John Viviano from my list,” Mervyn said humbly.

“Your solicitude frightens me. These other Johns—who are they?”

“John Boce, John Thompson, John Pilgrim.”

“You have eliminated them?”

“Not yet.”

Viviano showed his teeth in a wolfish grin. “You're an imbecile, Gray. Whoever Mary went off with, he would not be here, would he? Hence why ask me about Friday night?”

“I'd still like to know.”

The grin practically slavered. “My friend, I cannot tell you. Delicacy forbids. We are two red-blooded Americans. If I suggest that Friday night I enjoyed the company of a beautiful woman—not Mary—you will understand?”

“Can you give me her name?”

“What do you take me for?” asked the photographer loftily.

Mervyn bade John Viviano farewell.

He drove slowly back across the bridge to Berkeley. At a San Pablo Avenue drive-in he ordered a cheeseburger, and gloomily chewed it and the events of the day. They added up to zero. Evasions from John Boce, polite obstinacy from John Thompson, mock-gallantry from John Viviano. Leaving John Pilgrim.

Recalling the empty wine bottles in Pilgrim's cottage, Mervyn crossed the street to a liquor store and bought a bottle of cheap sherry. Then he drove back to 1909½-A Milton Street.

There was a battered Lambretta motorcycle parked outside, and he could hear guitar chords in a plaintive random progression. He was in luck. Mervyn knocked, and the door opened.

“John Pilgrim?” Mervyn said eagerly.

“I'm Pilgrim. Yes?” John Pilgrim was a big, lean, lithe young man with a formidable face, broken-nosed and jut-jawed and intent as an animal's. His skin was sallow and there was a little gray in his short black bristly hair. He wore coffee-colored corduroys, much stained, a shirt that had once been maroon, and scuffed black moccasins. While Mervyn was ready to concede him a certain virile magnetism, he found it hard to understand Mary Hazelwood's interest.

“I'm Mervyn Gray. Friend of Mary Hazelwood's?”

“Are you the guy who telephoned the other night?” Pilgrim growled.

“Which other night?”

“Saturday. Around twelve.”

Mervyn remembered; John Boce had called Pilgrim from Oleg Malinski's. “That was somebody else.”

“This sudden popularity,” Pilgrim said, still growling. “Why?”

Mervyn was suddenly tired and disgusted. But he managed to say patiently, “Mary took off for parts unknown Friday night with a fellow named John. There was some speculation it might have been you.”

The intent eyes looked Mervyn over, apparently decided he was harmless. “That's one speculation you can kiss good-bye.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” Mervyn said. He glanced down at his paper sack. “Say, I've got a bottle of sherry here. Do you imbibe?”

Pilgrim said promptly, “Come on in.”

Mervyn followed him into the living room. On the studio couch sat a young woman, with Mother Earth hips and a narrow waist; she wore her hair in bangs. She glanced at Mervyn once, then bent over her guitar. The chords resumed sadly.

John Pilgrim fetched two glasses from the kitchen; he paid no attention to the woman guitarist. Mervyn snapped the cap off the sherry bottle and poured. Pilgrim sipped. “Your name is what again?”

“Mervyn Gray.”

He nodded reflectively. “Mary's mentioned you. Said I ought to talk to you.”

“Oh? What about?”

“Poetry. I call myself a poet.” He grunted. “Nowadays the word means nothing. Not a damned thing.”

“It's an obsolete art,” Mervyn agreed.

Pilgrim scowled into his glass. “I kind of feel that way myself. Yet there's never been a greater need for it.”

“Yes, there's still the gap in the mind that poetry used to fill.”

Pilgrim replenished his glass. “Mary said
you
were a poet.”

“Hardly. I translate medieval troubadour songs.”

“You don't look the type,” Pilgrim said critically. “I took you for an egg-slicer salesman.”

“You don't exactly look like a librarian,” Mervyn said, stung. “More like a bouncer in a barroom.”

Pilgrim waved the glass. “That library job was just a fill-in for afternoons. I've got a night job. As soon as I get enough loot, I'm going to Japan. In Japan poetry is big. Even the Emperor writes
haiku
.”

“You know Japanese?”

“Not enough to read
haiku
. Not yet, anyway.”

The level in the bottle diminished. Suddenly the woman on the couch rose, carrying the guitar, and without a word went out. She shut the front door very softly. Pilgrim did not even look around.

Mervyn steered the conversation back into the channel of his more immediate interest. “A strange business, that thing about Mary. Not one of the Johns she knows will admit having seen her Friday night. You had a thing going with her, too, didn't you?”

John Pilgrim's battered lips curled in a sneer. “An ice-cream cone jumping up and down to be licked.”

If that's a sample of your poetic talent, Mervyn thought, I'll stick to the twelfth century. “Oh, then it was you she phoned Friday night?”

“Me? Friday night? Say.” Pilgrim drained the glass and set it down powerfully. “What are you, Mervyn, the fuzz? Why all the questions?”

“I told you. Mary arranged to meet somebody named John last Friday night. I'm trying to find out which John it was.”

“What did he do, rape her?”

“Don't be common,” Mervyn said coldly.

“Common!” Pilgrim gave him an entomological look. “You a square or something? Since when is rape common? It's the height of individual expression, like you thumb your nose at the fat-asses. But if you're thinking it was Pilgrim, forget it. Old Johnny's life is an open book.”

“The freshness of your metaphor o'erwhelms me,” Mervyn said. “I take your last remark to mean that you
didn't
see Mary Friday night?”

“What did the other Johns tell you?”

“Not a bloody thing,” said Mervyn bitterly. “They all laughed when I sat down and made like a detective.”

“I was a detective once,” the poet said, refilling his glass only. “Bellhopping, and a shamus slipped me a
finif
to tip him off when this fatcat from Waukegan staggers in with his fluff and beds down for the night. Big deal. They didn't even have the covers off. What are you playing dick-dick for, man?”

Mervyn braced himself against the rising tide. “I—want—to know—where Mary went and whom she's with!!!!”

Pilgrim chuckled. “She ain't with me. You can see that.”

“Why don't you just tell me,” Mervyn shouted, “where the hell you were Friday night?”

“Go back to dick-dick school,” said John Pilgrim calmly. “You got a lot to learn, Mervyn.” And, eliminating the intermediate step, he picked up the sherry bottle and partook of its contents directly.

In berserk fury, Mervyn dashed from John Pilgrim's pad. He drove to the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments like Ben Hur, blundered directly to his apartment, flung himself on the bed, breathing hard.…

He awoke at midnight stiff as a corpse. His tongue felt like a newly skinned skunk pelt and his head filled the room. He limped to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, dosed himself with aspirin; then he undressed and crept under the covers.

At dawn's early light he was still thrashing about in pursuit of Morpheus. Finally he gave up the chase, swung his shaky legs to the floor, kneaded his aching back and tried to face the challenge of another day. He showered, shaved, dressed, made coffee, scrambled eggs, burned the toast. While he was munching away, the mailman entered the court and began to move along the honor guard of mailboxes like a visiting VIP. Mervyn pushed his chair back and went out, feeling a great dread, for his mail.

There was only one letter in his box. It was a plain cheap white envelope; his name and address were in typescript; there was no return address. Mervyn hurried back to his apartment, locked the door, laid the envelope beside his plate, and stared at it.

But it was just a cheap envelope.

Well, Mervyn thought, there's no sense stalling any longer.

He slit the envelope open with his fork, getting the slit rather eggy, and looked in. A single folded sheet of plain white paper. Like the last time.

So he took the enclosure out of the envelope and unfolded it and read what was written on it.

One word, in a ballpoint pen, printed:

CONFESS
.

CHAPTER 8

Confess.…

Beyond a doubt the message referred to the death of Mary Hazelwood. (Though there was also Mrs. Kelly's tumble, for which he was seemingly responsible, too. But Mrs. Kelly had brayed her accusation at the top of her lungs; she was in no condition to write anonymous letters.)

Who could be sending him these Delphic messages? Only the devil who had stuffed Mary's body into the trunk of the green convertible, and had then planted Mary's purse and the bloody boot in his closet.

Mervyn dropped listlessly into his chair and sipped the lukewarm coffee for comfort. John Boce, John Thompson, John Viviano, John Pilgrim. For the umpteenth time he told his beads of reasoning.

First, there was Mary's telephone conversation with “John”—the key fact. It had been reported by Harriet Brill. Harriet Brill knew every one of Mary's friends. Harriet worked in proximity to John Thompson at the library and, until recently, to John Pilgrim. She knew John Viviano the photographer through his association with Mary, and she knew John Boce as a neighbor and sometime escort.…

Mervyn made a decision. Avaunt, Hamlet!

He went stealthily to the window and peered out. Ah. Harriet Brill's car was parked at the entrance, an old blue-and-white two-door Plymouth hardtop. So she was probably at home.

He let himself out of his apartment, crossed the court lithely, took the steps leading up to the balcony of the opposite unit two at a time. At the top he turned to look down at the concrete deck. This was where Mrs. Kelly had taken the header. Mervyn shivered. It was unbelievable that the old woman had survived. No wonder she had screeched at sight of the man she thought had pushed her. But what had made her think so?