The Nothing Man (18 page)

He stood up and went out into the kitchen. I heard the ice box door open and close.

He came back and sat down, a freshly opened bottle of beer in his hand.

"A blackmailer," he said thoughtfully. "Not just a oneshot, not just a gal squeezing a little dough when she was in a pinch, but a steady worker. That's the way you saw your wife, Brownie?"

"I-" I paused. "I asked you a question, Stuke."

"And you got an answer. An' here's one to the next question. Why does a guy give a woman dough? Why would he keep sendin' it to her month after month when he ain't even seem' her?"

I heard a laugh. One that was not mine, although it came from me. "Oh, no," I said. "No, Stuke. That I can't believe."

"I know you can't. I knew you wouldn't. But that don't change nothin'. I liked her-just liked to talk and visit with her, and she seemed to like it, too. She never asked me for no dough; she never tried to make me for a penny. So… so maybe that was part of it. Maybe that meant a lot to a guy who never saw a dame without her hand out. I liked her, and when you like someone you try to help 'em."

I laughed again, the laugh that was not my laugh. So he just liked to talk to her, visit with her; he was content with that. And I- Somehow-I believed him.

"That was all, keed. I can buy the other for a hell of a lot less than three grand, and I can get it a lot handier. I don't have to cover up and sneak around. That wasn't easy for me to do, Brownie. Talkin' about her like I did, pretendin' like I thought-"

"Why did you?"

"Why?" He shot me a puzzled glance. "You mean I should show how I felt in front of you? I shouldn't cover up about a guy's own wife? I guess you and me went to different schools, keed."

I reached for my drink, and the glass slipped from my fingers. It bounced from the coffee table and rolled splashing to the floor. I picked up the bottle and drank from it.

"I believe you threatened me," I said. "I was to lay off of this deal or you'd make me wish I had."

"Let's skip it, huh, pal? I wouldn't do it even if you was to try to make somethin' out of this. Maybe it would give you some trouble, but it would hurt me more. If it got around that I was spreadin' a story like-like-"

"Go on," I said.

"Ah, hell, Brownie." He tilted his chair back against the wall. "I was just sore. It-it ain't really nothin'. It didn't make no difference with me, did it? Why, Jesus, I had it doped out right from the beginning almost: that pension, with nothin' wrong showin' on you, an' breaking up with your wife when there wasn't another babe, an' your drinkin' and ridin' everyone, an'-and this place. You wantin' a home-not just a room-and doing your best to have one. It wasn't hard to figure out for a guy that was really interested. So I did, and what the hell? If it didn't mean nothin' to a lowdown jerk like me, why would-"

"You've known all along," I said. "You've let me think-You let me go ahead and-"

He mumbled apologetically. He raised the beer bottle and drank, his head thrown back to avoid my eyes.

He'd let me go ahead and…

It had all started because I was afraid that he.

"Let's talk about somethin' else, huh, keed?" He gave me a pleading look. "About this doll, now, that your friend Randall's been playin'. She's no good in trumps, an' you can tell him I said so. He'd better pull out while he's still able to."

"Doll?" I said. "Doll?"

It didn't register on me. There was no room for it in my mind.

"You didn't know about her? Well, damned near everyone else seems to. The guy's practically been livin' with her at night, and she's the kind that talks." He started to raise the beer bottle again, paused. "Come to think of it, maybe you better not tell him nothin'. Just leave her to me. I'll run the little bitch out of town."

The bottle went up. He threw his head back to receive the beer.

Then…

I doubt if he knew what happened then.

I hurled the whisky bottle and it crashed sickeningly against the bottle he was holding. His tilted chair shot from under him. He went over backward in a tinkling shower of glass, and his head hit the floor with a thud.

He lay there crumpled and groaning, his face bleeding from a dozen cuts.

I got a length of clothesline rope from the kitchen, swung an end over one of the living-room rafters, and gave him a boost. After all, he'd always wanted me to boost him, hadn't he?

And then I fled the place. I took a room at a hotel. And I have not been back since. And now I am back at the newspaper. The others have all gone, but I think someone has come in, has been sitting in the darkness at the other side of the room…

Of course, I didn't kill him. I know now that I am incapable of killing anyone. He has been missing for more than a day, but not because he is dead. I don't know what- why- I don't as yet have the answer to certain other questions, I only know that I have not killed and cannot kill, and…

_He is stirring at last, the man who has been sitting there behind me. He has come forward and his hand has dropped down on my shoulder. It is a well-manicured hand. I can smell the odor of hair oil and talcum powder and freshly shined shoes. The hand moves from my shoulder to the stack of manuscript. It rakes it off the desk and into the wastebasket_.

"Jesus, keed. You hadn't ought to write things like that. People might think you're crazy."

"I look like hell, huh, keed? Jesus, what'd you run out on me for? That wasn't no way to treat a pal. A guy's chair slips out from under him, and he smashes his face on a bottle an'-"

"What-what are you trying to pull?" I said. "You know I tried to kill you. I botched the job the first time, and you've been waiting for me to try again. You've had the shack staked out. You had them give out the report that you were missing, and-"

"Why, keed"-he widened his eyes in exaggerated amazement-"I don't dig you, a-tall. Like I said, my chair slipped. I'd swear to it, Brownie, get me? I'd
swear
it happened that way."

I got him, all right. I was beginning to get him.

I saw what he intended to do, and a shiver of sickness ran through me. "Why?" I said. "Why did you drop the stake-out? What made you see that I wasn't-that I couldn't-"

His grin widened. His eyes shifted a little, and he jerked his head toward the Teletypes. "Looks like you got a lot of news there, keed."

"Why?" I repeated.

"Maybe you ought to take a look: Maybe it's the same news we got at the station a couple hours ago."

I turned slowly. I walked over to the Teletypes. A long streamer of yellow paper drooped from each. I picked up the one from the A.P. machine.

And I read:

THOMAS J. JUDGE, UNTIL

RECENTLY A REWRITE

MAN ON THE PACIFIC CITY

COURIER, CONFESSED

TODAY TO THE MYSTERIOUS

MURDER OF ELLEN

TANNER BROWN, ESTRANGED WIFE

OF ANOTHER

COURIER EMPLOYEE. BROKE AND

OUT OF WORK,

THE SULLEN STOCKY NEWSMAN

TOLD POLICE THAT

HE 'JUST WANTED TO GET

EVERYTHING OVER

WITH.' 'I'M NOT SORRY ABOUT

HER,' HE

DECLARED. 'SHE HAD IT COMING

TO HER.'

JUDGE'S EARLY MORNING

CONFESSION TO LOS

ANGELES AUTHORITIES EXPLODED

A WIDELY HELD

THEORY THAT MRS. BROWN'S

DEATH WAS ONE OF

THREE SOCALLED SNEERING

SLAYER MURDERS.

WHILE UNABLE TO EXPLAIN

CERTAIN SIMILARITIES

MORE MORE MORE

Tom had been lying under the cottages (while I was there) and had returned to consciousness from his drunken stupor (just after I left). He was miserable and thoroughly angry. He had been sorely mistreated, as he saw it; she had lured him there and then laughed at him.

He crawled out from beneath one of the cottages and re-entered hers. She, half hysterical and painfully burned- and engaged in trying to beat out the fire in the bed-had hurled herself at him. He had brutally knocked her to the floor. Then, frightened by what he had done, he had hastily wiped up the room with his coat and fled. There was no actual intent to kill, of course, but still he had brought about her death. He had-and I hadn't. And I knew it was the truth.

"Well, Brownie?" Stukey said. "I guess that cleans it up, don't it?"

I stared at him blankly, thinking about Tom Judge, thinking of how much alike Tom and I were. Doubtless that was why I had always detested him so much, because he was so accurate a mirror of my own faults. Tom demanded the benefit of all doubts, but he could give no one the benefit of any. A frown was suspicious, but so also was a smile… Tom Judge, plowing stubbornly down one rocky path when he could have moved over into an easier and friendlier one. He wouldn't try to reorient himself. He wouldn't try to adapt himself to another way of life which, while it would not have been wholly satisfactory, could have been far better than the one he had. Not Tom. Not me. We preferred being miserable, martyring ourselves. Living not as men but human gadflies.

"You see, keed? I figured like everyone else that the three deaths were all tied together. That's what had me thrown. But when this Judge character confessed, I seen right away that you hadn't-"

Stukey had been right about me. I hadn't wanted any change. All I had wanted was to keep everyone under my thumb, to gouge and nibble away at them while I watched them squirm… Dave Randall. He hadn't always let Kay wear the pants in the family. It was I, not Kay, who had stripped him of all his self-confidence. She had merely taken over where I left off… So that was the way it was. Then, when I wearied of the game, when I could no longer continue it, I would kill myself. Or, no-No! I would make
Them
kill
me.
I would do something so blatantly criminal-so botched-that They would know I was guilty, and They would have to…

They
would
have to, wouldn't They?

They couldn't leave me to go on… into nothingness.

Stukey was watching me, narrow-eyed. He said, "Get it through your noggin, keed. You-"

"You're wrong," I said. "Tom's lying. I went over to the island that night. We argued, and she threatened me, and-and-"

"Huh-uh." He wagged his head. "He ain't lying. Anyway, you couldn't have been over on the island that night. You couldn't have got across the bay. Everyone knows that."

"I tell you I did! I hit her with the bottle. I-"

"Yeah? How you goin' to prove it-and what if you did? You want to be sent up for a couple of years on an assault charge, Brownie? You want to lay around in a cell with no booze and nothin' to do but think?"

He chuckled softly. But his round little eyes were like brown chunks of ice.

"I killed Mrs. Chasen," I said. "I met her in Los Angeles when I went up for the funeral, and-"

"You didn't kill her. She killed herself."

"I tell you I
did
kill her!" My voice rose. "I can tell you just how I did it. I'd been out drinking, and when I came back she was lying on the bed asleep and..

I told him.

He listened thoughtfully, but his head wagged again. "So that was how-" He hesitated. "But you didn't kill her, keed. She was already dead."

"I tell you… What makes you think-?"

"You remember them sleeping pills she had? Five-grain amytals? Well, we checked back on the prescription and she'd had it filled the day before. She'd got thirty of those goofballs and there was only five left in her purse."

"But that doesn't prove she took-"

"I'm tellin' you, keed. We didn't have much in the way of a body to work on, but there was plenty of blood. And that blood was loaded with the goofer dust. More than enough to kill her. Sure, I kept it quiet. The deal was futzed up enough as it was, and it didn't make sense. How in the hell if she'd killed herself could she have wound up in the dog pound? I figured maybe the coroner had called his shots wrong. But-well, it makes sense now. She was already dead when you hit her. And by the way, you didn't break her neck. The coroner would've spotted that. Huhuh, you hit her, I guess, but you didn't kill her."

He nodded firmly. I reached for a cigarette, then dropped it to the floor unlit. And I was back there in the room with her, looking down on her body-her tense, stretched-out straight body-even her fingers stiff as dead wood. Dead, all right, that's what she was-and somehow I must have known it. Half of me, anyway, half of me must have known it. But the two-way pull had been working, and the other half had to keep at it, pushing and plunging and needling. So I hit her and picked her up and tossed her into the dog pound, _even though I knew she was dead_.

Christ.

His eyes softened a little. "She was a pretty lonely little lady, wasn't she, keed? From what I hear, she didn't get along with most people. So she was kind of nuts about you, and you didn't know how to stave her off and-well, maybe you'd better tell me what happened. Your guess would be better than mine. I figure she must have found out what was wrong with you. She must've seen that things weren't going to be like she'd thought. And I guess a little lady like that… I guess she couldn't take it. She didn't want to take it."

_No one but you, Brownie. If I couldn't have you_…

"You see, keed? Once I got that first murder out of the way, the real one, the others fell right into line. I could take 'em for what they were, a suicide and an accident."

"You don't know," I said. "You can't be sure. If I confessed to-"

"They'd put you in a nuthouse, Brownie. They wouldn't give you the gas chamber."

"Constance Wakefield was trying to blackmail me. I stalled her and got her to take that late train, and then I got on with her-"

"Save it, keed." He held up his hand. "I got a pretty good idea of what you did, and it don't make no difference, see? You didn't kill her. You didn't ride over into the next county and shove her off the train. It was just what it looked like-an accident."

"But I-I-"

"Okay," he shrugged. "Have it your own way. A couple years for assault and battery, six months for maiming a dead body, a couple of years more on this Wakefield deal-whatever they'd call that. About five years in the pen, say, if they believe you. That or the nuthouse. Is that what you want, keed?"

My throat was dry. I shook my head silently.

He sighed, and the sound was weary and a little sad. "It ain't much fun, is it, keed? You've been slidin' down the rope and havin' a hell of a time for yourself. And now you're at the bottom, and all you can do is hang there. You can't let go and you can't get anyone to give you a shove. It wouldn't make 'em nothing. They can't do your job for you. It-it ain't much fun, is it, keed?"

The Teletypes were clicking again. I turned and stared at them blankly, at the words marching across the yellow paper-across a vast and empty desert where a dead man walked through: