The Twenty-Year Death (63 page)

I still couldn’t tell if he knew, if Vee had told him. He seemed to be needling me purposely, going on about family, making the remarks about killing, like he really wanted to get to me, to see if I’d crack. Was it possible that he was afraid of being caught up in the murder if it went the wrong way? Nah, he couldn’t worry about that in this town. Nothing would come
near him. He wanted to tear me down because I had violated his space, and it was certain he knew about Vee’s and my true relationship.

The food was brought over, a team of three men, two carrying plates, and the chef himself standing next to Mr. Browne with his hands clenched together. He went through a detailed description of what was being served, but I didn’t hear any of it, and I don’t think Browne or Vee did either. When the serving team had left, Browne dug right in. Apparently there was no talking while eating, and since Browne had fallen silent, neither of us was going to make any attempt at small talk.

I finished my scotch and had several glasses of wine too. As Browne was wiping up his plate with a piece of bread he said in a quiet, measured voice, “Rosy. You’re sleeping with my mistress and you’ve been living the high life on my dime.” Vee and I froze. “I could have you killed tonight if I wanted to, but you’ve already taken a pretty bad blow, and you’re set to take another at any moment.”

I knew then that he knew, and I knew my life was over.

“You know,” he said, and took a gulp of wine, “you and I have a mutual friend.”

My stomach boiled. I could feel it in the back of my throat.

“Great guy, out in S.A.”

I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and now I knew who had bought up my debt.

“Hub Gilplaine,” he said.

I felt my face grow slack.

He took another gulp of wine, nodding to indicate he was still going to say something. “Vee tells me that you just came into some money. She said something about two million dollars.”

He paused for me to say something, but I couldn’t even swallow, my mouth was so dry.

“Now, really, I don’t care who Vee sleeps with, I’d be crazy if I did. If it was my wife, I’d kill you both, but Vee, she’s not wife material. She just needs to know who’s boss. And you know who, right, honey?”

Vee looked like she might cry. I’d never seen her like that. She was the strongest, loudest, most demanding woman I’d ever met, and I’d met a lot of loud women. But I knew now that she could be beaten, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, and that my concern over her setting me up for a fall should she take a tumble was absolutely correct. Yes, she had to die. That Browne had gotten it out of her was trouble enough. Now neither of us was going to see any of that money.

“I’ve got a wife too,” I said.

“Good for you. Remind me to send her a present.”

“She’s sick. She needs to stay in the hospital. It’s very expensive.”

“I’m crying on the inside.”

“Please.” I thought about all his talk about family. “She’s the only family I’ve got left,” I tried.

“We’ll take that into consideration,” he said. “Now, you owe me five hundred thousand dollars.”

“But I only owed fifteen grand to Hub,” I said, and could hear I was whining.

“Let me explain to you how this works,” Browne said. “When someone buys up your debt, it’s like refinancing your house. The deal changes. And you owe me five hundred thousand dollars.”

I didn’t say anything.

He stood. “I’ll give you a little time for the estate to come
through, but if I don’t get my money on that day, it goes up by five grand a day until I get it, because you’re gonna have the dough.” He stood, and put his hand on the back of Vee’s neck. “That leaves you some for your wife’s hospital bills, right?” Vee winced, and I knew he had tightened his fist. “You didn’t think you were getting any of that money, did you, Vee?”

She looked across at me, and her eyes were shiny with tears. “No.”

“Of course not,” he said. She winced again. “There’s something I’ve got to go see about. You’ll be in the room when I get back.” It was an order. “Here’s the key.” He dropped it beside her, and I remembered I still had the other key to the room. Either he didn’t remember or he didn’t care about getting it back. Instead, he looked at me, and said, “Stay. Enjoy some coffee. Dessert. It’s all on me. I think it’s going to be nice doing business with you, Rosy.” He raised his voice. “Excellent as always,” he said to no one in particular, and he wove his way through the tables and out the door.

The two of us sat in silence. It was as though I’d been hit by a truck. I was so despondent I wished I actually
had
been hit by a truck. I thought about going out into the street to see if it could be arranged.
Wham!
Goodbye troubles.

At last, Vee stood up, threw her napkin on the table, and walked out without a word.

I just kept sitting, looking at nothing, and wishing I were dead.

I sat there a long time. It wasn’t until the third time the waiter came around to offer me coffee that I could look him in the eye when I shook my head no.

But that wasn’t good enough for him. He was a real sentimentalist. “Are you all right, sir?”

I couldn’t do more than press my lips together and shrug over and over, exposing my palms again and again: I don’t know, I don’t know. I was on the verge of tears.

“Take your time.” And he stepped away.

My mind circled. I needed to get out of Calvert. Healey and Dobrygowski wouldn’t like it, it would look suspicious, but I wasn’t going to risk any more time in the city than I needed to. Browne could get at me too easily if I stayed. Five hundred thousand dollars! What was I going to do? Palmer had said I was getting some money from the estate, but I certainly didn’t know if it was going to be that much. Sure, it was
supposed
to be two million, but it wasn’t in the bank yet. And the will might still be contested, and there would be legal fees... How could Hub do this to me? I was going to pay him back! We were supposed to be friends. And just like that, my fear turned to rage—I wanted to kill Hub. I wanted to kill Browne, and Vee, and everyone else. I wanted to kill them all.

But I couldn’t think like that. It was thinking like that that would get me all fouled up. I’d had too much to drink with lunch. I needed to get straight.

I looked around. Most of the lunch crowd had left, and bus-boys were clearing tables into a bin on a rolling cart. My waiter hovered a few tables away, watching me. I gave a weak smile and nod, pulled myself together, and got up to leave.

In the lobby, I stood halfway between the elevator bank and the front entrance, unsure where to go and what to do. My anger had drained off, leaving me exhausted, and now there was only one thought running through my head: I needed to get out of town if I wanted to live.

But what about Vee? I couldn’t trust Vee. And I couldn’t bring her with me. That would look far too suspicious. I thought of my original plan, before this lunch fiasco, the decision I’d made with a clear head, not out of anger. For peace of mind, to at least neutralize the risk of the police, Vee had to die. If there had been any doubt before, I didn’t have the luxury to entertain it now. Now it needed to happen and fast. Tonight. And I needed to figure the way to do it.

That’s what I was thinking as I stood there, working out again why Vee needed to die, when all of a sudden I got the feeling that I was being watched. I hated that feeling. It reminded me of Clotilde’s paranoia, and it always made me worry about my own mental health. But I just couldn’t shake it. So I scanned the lobby, and zeroed in on a man sitting in one of the overstuffed easy chairs across from the front desk. He wore a tailored suit and had one foot resting on the opposite knee, with a paper spread out before him on his lap. I watched him, and I was certain that his eyes kept darting up from the paper, focusing on me. Did the police have me under surveillance? That would be bad. That would be very bad.

I turned suddenly and went out the revolving doors, and hurried across the street into the First Calvert City Bank. It was a
large edifice, the ceiling rising three stories above with two exposed balconies hanging over the tellers. A line of people, men and women, stood watching the “Next Teller” sign light and ring and following its command like Pavlov’s dogs. I turned my back on them, and stepped over to a chest-high counter that ran along the front windows, where I pretended to make out a withdrawal slip. I kept my eyes on the hotel’s entrance, waiting for the man I had seen to come out after me, expecting him any moment.

I waited long enough to fill out the withdrawal slip ten times, but he never appeared, nor did anyone else who seemed on the lookout for where I had gone. This worried me almost as much as if he had followed me. Maybe I really was going crazy like Clotilde. People who decide to kill other people aren’t sane, right? But thinking like that wasn’t going to get done what needed to get done. So I pushed it away into the same corner of my head where I’d hidden Joe’s death as best as possible, and made a pact with myself to wait another five minutes, measuring them on my watch.

After three minutes no one had appeared and I’d had enough. I left the bank and began to wander the streets with no clear plan, but heading uptown towards Great Aunt Alice’s all the same. Halfway there it occurred to me, if the man at the Somerset wasn’t a cop, maybe he was one of Browne’s men. I tried to place him as one of the men I’d seen walking out with Browne that morning, but my mental image of them was almost nonexistent. Browne had been alone when he came into the dining room, and he’d been alone the night I’d...visited him. So it was just as likely that he didn’t have men with him all of the time. And I didn’t even know for sure that the man in the lobby had been looking at me.

My thoughts chased one another like that, and I traversed the blocks without seeing the city around me. I was lost again in the same way I got when writing. I could thank Taylor Montgomery for that. He had reawakened my creative impulse after it had remained unexercised so long, and now I was putting it to good use. In a way, he was responsible for my new career as a criminal. He was even setting Vee up for me with the article in tonight’s evening paper. That made him practically an accomplice. I started to feel guilty about leaving him, what with how important my interest in his writing was to him. A blow to a writer’s optimism like that could set him back years. I promised myself I’d write him a letter before I left. If I left...if I...no, when I left. After I’d done this one last difficult thing.

I got to Great Aunt Alice’s then. Connie let me in. Her expression at the sight of me was one of heavy concern. I must have looked worse than I knew, and I wondered if it was my fear or my new grim conviction that showed. It could have just been the day’s liquor.

“Will you be to dinner tonight, Mr. Shem?” she asked.

“I can’t say that I know,” I said.

“Mrs. Hadley is wanting to see you and she was hoping you would be to dinner.”

Great Aunt Alice. I couldn’t handle Great Aunt Alice on top of everything else just then. But I was staying in her house, eating her food... I bit the bullet. “I could see her now,” I said, taking the attitude that the sooner it was started, the sooner it would be over.

“Mrs. Hadley is indisposed for the rest of the afternoon. She really hoped you’d be to dinner.”

I tried to smile, but it wasn’t in me. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and went upstairs without waiting for another exchange.
The last thing I needed was to worry about what Great Aunt Alice and Connie thought of me.

In my room, I retrieved my duffel bag from beneath the bed, and started pulling my clothes out of the closet and stuffing them in without any semblance of order. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before I was packed and ready to go. I stood beside the bed, supporting some of my weight by leaning on the duffel bag with two of my fingers. I stood that way for three or four, oh, I don’t know how many minutes, and asked myself again why I couldn’t just pick up and leave right then. It was twenty to two.

I picked up the phone with the intention of calling the Enoch White clinic and getting Clotilde on the line. She’d remind me what I was doing this for. Just hearing her voice, the relief and good will she’d had when I told her we’d gotten the money, that would shore up my nerve. But instead of dialing California, I found myself calling Joe’s girl Mary.

A maid answered the phone. How come you could never get anybody just straight? She put the phone down, and I could hear the echoing sounds of her walking away, and then a door closing. There were some loud clanks as the receiver was picked up, and Mary said, “All right, Louise,” another clank as the maid set the receiver back into the cradle, and then, “Mr. Rosenkrantz, I’m so glad you called.”

I let out my breath, and found that I didn’t know what I had intended to say to her. “Mary, I’m so sorry,” I said, and it came out as a sob. What was I doing? Was I going to break down and throw it all away? I shook my head, regaining control of my voice. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Rosenkrantz. I’m sorry I ran off yesterday after the service. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do.”
She laughed, but it sounded hollow. “My father even made me drink out of his flask, I was so distraught.”

“I saw that,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose with my free hand.

“You did,” she said, guilty. “Oh, well, I guess it was all right under the circumstances. That’s what my father said.”

“Of course. Of course.”

“So you weren’t angry that I didn’t say anything to you.”

“I was in shock myself,” I said. “If I could do anything about all of this...”

“I’ve been saying that to myself for a week now,” she said in a brave voice.

“The estate—” I started, but she interrupted.

“I don’t care about that. It’s not about that. It never was.”

And that made me feel better. Maybe that’s why I had called, to hear her say that, to assuage at least some of my guilt. A fine murderer I was, let me tell you.

“I just wonder if I’ll ever stop missing him.” She paused. “Did you ever stop missing Quinn? After the divorce, I mean,” she said, and hurried to add, “if that’s not too bad of me to ask.”