The Four Johns (7 page)

Mary Hazelwood had been murdered. And someone had stolen his car and stuffed her body into the trunk. This someone was almost certainly an acquaintance, because he knew all about the trick ignition switch. A sickening thought.… Well, now was the time to fish or cut bait.…

Going to the police was out.

Once he had made the decision, his next step was clear. And this was too exposed a spot to do it. Mervyn started the car and drove off.

He turned at Ardly Avenue and then took Perkins Road to the Freeway, heading north.

After a few miles he drove off into a side road, and presently left-turned into another.

He stopped the car between a vineyard and a field barren except for a few sheds and farmhouses in the distance. The hot breeze sighed through the grapevines; grasshoppers sang.

Mervyn got out. He was alone on the road.

Steeling himself, he flung open the trunk. She was still there, in sky blue, stiff and curled. Poor Mary, thought Mervyn, poor innocent friendly Mary.

He stooped. Her suitcase lay half under her body. Her right temple showed a great dent that had pushed her features askew. Apparently she had been killed by a blow from a heavy object. The area of contusion showed a pattern of secondary marks, grouped in a semicircle, where the skin had been broken. Mary's bones were delicate; the blow might not have done such damage to a heavier skull.

The muscles of his arm quivering, he reached behind the body and pulled out the suitcase. The body bumped to the floor of the trunk. The blazing sun, the vineyard smelling of hot leaves and sulphur, the dust-colored road, the car: in such a context the corpse seemed absurd as well as pitiful.

Mervyn lugged the small suitcase around to the front seat and opened it. He was poking around when a faint clatter brought his head up and around sharply. Behind him at the crossroads a toy truck was growing larger. He hurried around to the rear of the car and slammed down the trunk lid, breathing hard. The toy became a noisy, dilapidated pickup. Three pairs of expressionless adult eyes swiveled to stare at him from the front seat as the pickup passed. In the rear crouched four bedraggled children with dirt-colored hair and fox faces; they too stared at Mervyn until the pickup dwindled to nothing behind a cloud of dust.

Mervyn went back to the front seat and finished exploring the suitcase; it contained only the usual feminine clutter. He took it back to the trunk, unlocked the trunk again, stowed the suitcase away.… He frowned. Wasn't something missing? Her purse! Suitcase but no purse.… He lifted the body, looked underneath. No purse.

Mervyn shut the trunk. His hands tingled. He went to the side of the road, scooped up another handful of the hot, dry sand from between a pair of small tumbleweeds. He rubbed his palms with it nervously. Then he climbed into the car and turned it around and drove back to the crossroads and presently onto the Freeway.

The sun was dropping low over the flatlands. Through the haze in the west the golden hills of the Coast Range loomed serenely above it all. Mervyn strove to capture some of their aloofness. He could not afford to handle his problems, he kept telling himself, on an emotional level.… Automatically checking his gas gauge, he was reminded that when he had reclaimed the car at the Madera garage the gauge had stood at the quarter mark. Significant fact? One that deserved thinking about? The week before, John Boce had borrowed the convertible and made much of the fact that he had returned it with a full tank. Mervyn had not used the car since. Three-quarters of sixteen gallons—the capacity of the tank—was twelve. At highway speeds the old convertible usually made about fifteen miles to the gallon. Approximately 180 miles, then 190 perhaps, for the gauge was a bit below the one-quarter mark. Madera was something over 150 miles from Berkeley. Which left thirty-five, maybe forty miles to be accounted for.

All this was very strange. And he still had to decide what to do with Mary.…

He looked to the left, toward the mountains. After a few miles the farms thinned out as the barren foothills began. He knew places where no one came, not even to graze cattle.

Mervyn grimaced. He'd have to make sure there were no witnesses.… Wheels within wheels. A single certainty: someone wanted him tagged for the murder of Mary.

He reverted to Mary's handbag. Why was it missing? Accident? Or design? The possibilities were alarming.

He began to drive faster. Sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five. The rush of the wind recalled him to his senses, and he decelerated; thereafter he drove cautiously, well below the speed limit. It would not do to be arrested. Or, even worse, to become involved in an accident and have the trunk fly open.

At Merced he gassed up. He discovered that he was famished; he had eaten nothing since breakfast. He considered. The time was now six o'clock. If he drove straight through he would arrive in Berkeley about eight, or half past. For a reason which he could not identify, this seemed too early. So he turned into a drive-in.

But now he found that, hungry or not, he could not eat with Mary Hazelwood curled up dead in the trunk. It seemed monstrously unfitting. Committed, he ordered a milk shake, drank it without tasting it. Then he called for black coffee and sat brooding.… If only he could dump the entire business—anonymously—into the hands of the police! Why should he be in this miserable position? To have to choose between disposing of a murder victim and destroying his career! Or even having to take the rap for the whole thing.…

Suddenly nervous, Mervyn paid up and started north once more. And again that niggling disinclination to get back too early. He chewed at it and finally identified the cause. Night was what he was after. He did not want to be
seen
. He was feeling guilty!

The thought enraged him; he drove faster. But then he slowed again. After all, he did have something to slink about—he
was
carrying a corpse in the trunk of his car, and he
was
planning to dispose of it where it would never be found. He thought of the police and again, in frustration, rejected the idea. It was simply too damn suicidal.… If only he knew the identity of that someone, if he could manage to tuck poor Mary's corpse into that someone's bed, for instance … that would be poetic justice.… He spent the rest of the trip—through Modesto, Manteca, Tracy, north to Walnut Creek and over the hills to Berkeley—in a series of fantasies, all darkly disastrous to the someone who had planted the corpse in his car.

It was a quarter to ten when he finally stole to a stop at the curb around the corner from the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments.

Mervyn got out of the car just as an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt came heel-and-toeing along the walk pulling a leash, at the other end of which a little white dog jerked and jumped. Mervyn froze. Would the mutt start acting peculiarly when it passed the car? Dogs were supposed to be able to smell death.…

The man and the dog passed.

Mervyn felt like praying.

He walked swiftly to the corner and down Perdue Street to the stucco urns that marked the entrance to the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments.

Stealing into the court, he paused. Lights showed here and there. His own apartment was dark, as were the three second-story apartments to his right—Numbers 12, 11 and 10, occupied respectively by Susie Hazelwood, Mrs. Kelly (now in the hospital) and Harriet Brill. Apartment 1, John Boce's, was brightly lit and through the windows came talk and shrill feminine laughter. Mervyn recognized the cackle of Harriet Brill, and John Boce's easy rumble, then a harsh staccato tenor, vaguely familiar.… He went on. Boce's parties were the least of his concerns.

As he passed, the drapes at one of Boce's open windows flickered. A moment later, the door opened and John Boce lurched out. “Mervyn!” he bawled. “Hey, Mervyn!”

Mervyn drew a deep breath; he halted and turned. Boce was reeking of bourbon. “Mervyn, old boy, you're home at last. Where the hell have you been?”

“Here and there.”

Boce seized his arm. “Come on in for a drink. Or two or three. Everything top quality. That's old Bocey's style, eh, what?”

Mervyn tried to detach his arm. “I'll drop in later, John.”

“Mervyn, I insist. Susie insists. Harriet insists. Everybody insists.”

“Fine, John. Later. Let go.”

“Mervyn, can this be the real you? Standing first on one leg, then the other? Come onnnnn.…” He tugged; Mervyn tugged back.

Susie peered out. “Why, if it isn't Mervyn, back from his tomcatting.” Her hair hung loose and fluffy, as if it were freshly washed; her voice was light. She kept looking at him.

Boce complained, “He's trying to give me the freeze, Susie. Say, look. Mervyn. You don't know Blake Callahan, do you?”

“No.”

“Or his wife? Estelle?”

“No.”

“Aha, just as I thought! Then you better come on in and meet 'em.” Mervyn's arm was growing numb; he winced, and Susie smiled sweetly and went back into the apartment. In his enthusiasm Boce sprayed him with bourbon. “Aw, come
on
, buddy-boy. I offer you beautiful women and whiskey flowing like water. You know me, pal. I never do things halfway. You name it, we got it, or we know where to get it. Which reminds me. I had to borrow a fifth of your bourbon. I'll replace it, natch.”

“How did you get into my apartment?” asked Mervyn furiously.

“The usual way. Through the front door.”

“Meaning that you picked the lock, or removed the hinges?”

“Hell, no. I just turned the knob, and the door opened.”

Mervyn blew out his breath and permitted Boce to drag him into Apartment 1.

John Viviano, pacing back and forth across the room, proved to be the source of the harsh voice. He stopped dramatically in midstride as Mervyn entered, nodded a regal quarter of an inch, and continued. Harriet Brill leaned languidly against a wall, wearing a yellow-green-and-red Benares print skirt, a long-sleeved black jersey blouse and brass hoop earrings four inches in diameter.

The couch was occupied by a couple wearing the uneasy expressions of people who find themselves trapped in the grizzly pit at the zoo; the man was a physicist answering to the name of Mike, and the woman, Charlotte, was his wife. Mervyn vaguely gathered that they were connected with the university. The preadvertised Blake Callahan turned out to be a little man wearing big black-rimmed glasses, his wife, Estelle, a huge woman in a tight brown-satin dress; they sat in two of Boce's orange canvas sling chairs. Just who they were Mervyn did not learn; his host forgot to follow through.

Susie, in slacks and sweater—both her favorite gray—sat on the couch beside Mike the physicist. She was being vivacious tonight, an aspect of her personality Mervyn had not suspected. Susie was a continual surprise. The slacks exhibited her slight, supple figure to its optimum; the softness of her hair gave her a softer, more feminine look than usual. Mervyn sat down beside her; she gave him a cryptic side glance, started to say something, then changed her mind.

Mervyn slumped back on the couch, relieved not to have to make small talk. John Viviano, in any event, left him little choice. The fashion photographer held forth with majestic vehemence, marching back and forth, his hands flying about.

“It is not in the nature of the human animal,” declared Viviano. “It is unnatural. We live in an unnatural age. Consider
Felis leo
. Who wears the mane? The lion,
not
the lioness. Consider the Siamese fish. Who carries the magnificent fins? Again the male. And the male iguana with his ruff. Spectacular! Today everything is upside down.”

He gestured toward his black slacks and tan hound's-tooth jacket. “Observe me. I am the unobtrusive one.” He pointed a long, tense forefinger at Harriet. “And she, she is the lion, the Siamese fish, the male iguana! Is it a wonder the mental hospitals are full? Sad to relate, I contribute to the madness. It is I who bedizen these women, these cannibals, when I should better give them a bucket and mop and say, ‘Here, woman, wash the floor.' But such is the case.”

Harriet Brill, who had been making a series of fretful gestures, at last was able to interrupt. “I certainly don't think you're making a fair case.”

Viviano whirled like a dancer. “I am now unfair?”

“You are, Viviano. People dress to express their personalities. Just because you're repressed—”

“I am now repressed, Brill?”

“You are!”

The little man named Blake Callahan said in a voice surprisingly deep, “I have an idea that should satisfy everyone. As I see it, John Viviano resents the neutrality of his clothing, while Harriet correctly attacks his pose of masculine martyrdom. The controversy can easily be resolved. Why don't you two simply exchange clothes? Viviano will then be clad in garments colorful enough, God knows, for any strutting male, while Harriet, in his sober costume—sharing his
virtu
, so to speak—will be assured that his antifeminism is merely a polemic device.”

Harriet and Viviano both spoke at once, in voices equally passionate. Mervyn turned to Susie. “Who is Blake Callahan?”

“Something to do with the university press.”

Charlotte leaned across her physicist-husband, Mike. “I didn't see Mary at the gym today, Susie. We're keeping the class going, you know, during summer session and intersession both.”

Mervyn remembered now that Mary had been studying fencing; Charlotte must be the instructor. John Boce lumbered over with a highball for Mervyn. “Haven't you heard? Mary's eloped, or has been abducted. By John Viviano.”

“That is not the case,” said Viviano quickly. “It was an opportunity not extended to me.”

Harriet Brill made a contemptuous noise. “You men are all so glandular. You assume that Mary went off on some cheap adventure—”

“A trained psychologist should be surprised at nothing,” said Viviano.

“I'm not surprised. I merely understand the difference between romance and vulgarity.”