Wild (7 page)

T
HE FAT YOUNG MAN
lifted one bare foot into his lap and carefully inspected a bulbous big toe. The foot was grimed with dirt. He probed, caught something between his fingernails, yanked, and sighed.

“Durned sand-spurs,” he said. “Comes of trying to keep your feet healthy.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“Don’t wear shoes. You want healthy feet, don’t ever wear no shoes. You should know that.”

“I see.” He had a face like a white balloon. The eyes and mouth looked painted on the rubbery surface. He was seated in a straight-backed cane-bottomed chair, leaning back against the office outside wall. Above his head a weathered black-and white-leathered sign read: The Royal Palms Apartment. A goose-neck lamp gleamed dazzling bright over the sign. Beetles, moths, and strange insects performed a shimmering circular suicide dance around the light. They rained down.

He said, “Sho, now—they’re fungus to reckon with. Gits ‘tween your toes. Onc’t in a while a hook warm. But you want healthy feet, keep them shoes off.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend. He’s renting one of your cabins. Name’s Gamba. Could you tell me the number?”

“What for?” he said.

“I’d like to see him,” I said.

He said, “Number Ten’s the one you want.”

“Thanks.”

“He ain’t there.”

I turned back and looked at him. “How do you know?”

“He drives a bran’ new Chevy station wagon, don’t he? Sure he does. Well, I saw it go out a while back.”

“How long a while back”

“Not long a while.”

“He was driving?”

“It’s his car, ain’t it?”

I didn’t say anything. The bugs swirled and fell like sparse snowflakes.

“Lickety-split, he went.”

“Okay,” I said.
“Okay!”
We watched each other. He looked as if I’d hurt his feelings. “I’ll go back and wait for him,” I said. “Do you mind?

I went to the car, got behind the wheel, and drove past the office along a shell drive among dense trees. In the rear view mirror I saw the fat young man thumb his nose at me.

Number Ten was the end cabin down by Boca Ciega Bay. Trees and shrubbery were thick around all the cabins. Most of the cars parked beside the cabins were locally licensed. Jump trade.

I clumped up the front steps of Number Ten and knocked on the door. I felt good and planned to keep a stock of those big yellow pills handy.

No sound of footsteps. Nothing. Like an empty house. The serene bayside stillness, suddenly immune to the sounds of crickets, jumping mullet, and bedsprings. Not even a bedspring from Number Ten. Nothing at all.

Passed out. Or gone in his car.

I knocked again, then tried the door. It was locked. I left the porch, walked around the side of the cabin. Lights were on inside, but I couldn’t see through the windows because the blinds were drawn.

There was no grass behind Number Ten. I walked without sound on wet, hard-packed earth, through gentle winds of silence. A sleepy heron stood on the beach, staring out across black, oily water at a red blinker.

On the back porch, I side-stepped a case of bottles and reached the door. A dim light reflected against inside blinds. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked and I began to smell something.

I flung the door open and stepped into a wall of gas thick enough to stop bullets.

I held my breath, tore into the kitchen like a maniac. Light from a hallway showed a stove. Gamba was sitting on a chair in front of the stove with his head in the oven.

F
UTILITY STRUCK
dainty little chimes over my head.

I turned off the gas. I grabbed him, dragged him across the floor onto the porch. Bottles clattered. I pitched him down the porch steps and stretched him in the yard, then began artificial respiration, I gulped at the humid night air and knew damned well I was working on a corpse.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. “You son of a bitch, breathe. Breathe.”

He didn’t want to breathe. After fifteen minutes, I was positive why. He might have had something he wanted to tell me. He would never tell anybody anything. He was getting colder by the second.

He was dead.

The heron flapped its wings and drifted lazily, like a lost soul, out across the bay, lifting into the night, heading for the red blinker.

I stood up. I went into the house, holding my breath, and flung all windows open. The gas began to dissipate.

I went out on the front porch and down the steps. There was no sign of anybody. I gulped air and felt lousy. I went on out back to where he lay, cursing softly. I rolled him over. He hadn’t changed. I grabbed him under the arms and lugged him back up the porch steps, across the clattering bottles and into the kitchen.

The air inside was all right now. I switched on an overhead neon, stood there and looked at him.

Vince Gamba was a lost cause.

I checked the position of the death chair. It looked as if he’d made himself comfortable, drawn the chair close to the oven, and bent the oven door down so it wouldn’t be in the way. The bottom of the oven was covered with a bright canary-yellow pillow with gold fringe. He had slumped on the chair, crossed his arms inside the oven, and laid his head down. Then the gas had been turned on.

A typical suicide, somebody might say. I didn’t believe it for a minute. He had known something. He had wanted to spill what he knew. He had died for it.

His face was an ugly color, choked; the eyes bulged. The flesh was evil-looking from gas death. I knelt down and went through his pockets. Sometimes they leave notes. Often, in fact. They feel they have to go out with a flourish, never thinking it’s false. There was a wallet, with his name: Vincent Gamba. No address. No sign of where he worked. Something crinkled. I hauled a newly folded blue envelope from his left pants pocket. It was addressed to him at the Royal Palms Apartments. I took out the letter. It was on blue paper, written with a feminine hand in black ink:

The envelope was postmarked Orlando, Florida.

I refolded the letter slowly and placed it inside the envelope slowly, and folded that on the exact same crease, and put it back in his pocket. I stood up slowly and looked down at him.

Gassed to death.

I felt strangely dissatisfied and relentless.

I turned away and began checking Cabin Number Ten.

The living room was furnished with old rattan and a grass rug, a small bookcase full of Zane Grey, H. G. Wells,
Marvels of the World, in Ten Volumes
, Kathleen Norris, and a bunch of dog-eared
Popular Mechanics
magazines, a couple of confession magazines, and one slim pamphlet on birth control. The room looked unlived-in. The odor of gas still lived in the softly twitching cheap curtains.

I went into the bedroom and turned on the light. The room was painted a raw blue—walls and ceiling. A naked electric bulb glared from the center of the ceiling. The floor was painted brown, flaked from hard heels. A raw red bureau, with one drawer hanging out like a sick tongue, stood to the left beside an archway that led into the living room. A ratty pink circular rug, looking as if it had been woven from old feminine underwear, was nailed to the floor by the bed. It had been torn from two of the nails. There was a red desk next to the bureau, with a sheet of paper on it and a pencil on the floor. The bed was a mess, with a clean sand-colored spread roped around the foot. An empty fifth of Gordon’s Gin was on the bed. That bed had been through hell.

At the desk, I looked down on bold, heavy, male handwriting:

He had gouged the rest of it with the pencil until the lead broke. Between the wall and the desk was a small waste-paper basket. I looked at the wadded sheets in it. They were covered with the same blaring nothing, written in some kind of a frenzy. Drunk, maybe. Maybe he decided suicide was the only way.

I stared at the sheet of paper on the desk. Something glinted in a partly open desk drawer. I slid the drawer open, reached in and brought out a .32 automatic. I stood there looking at it. It was a Savage. I started to smell it and heard a car purr along the shell and grind to a stop.

I made it fast to the living room and looked out a window. Ivor Hendrix was paying off the driver of a yellow cab. The cab spurted off along the shell, and she turned, stumbling, toward the cabin.

She was so drunk she took the top three steps on her hands and knees.

S
HE GOT TO HER FEET
on the porch and moved toward the door.

“Vince,” she called softly. “Vince?”

I put the .32 automatic in my pocket, walked over to the front door, unlatched and opened it.

She stared at me, huddled against the door jamb. She looked very unhappy. She wore a thin cotton sheath dress and black pumps. The thick auburn hair was snarled. She carried the white cylindrical purse.

“You,” she said. “I promised you.”

She began to slide down the door jamb. I reached out, caught her arm, hauled her inside, and closed the door.

Her eyes roved the room.

“Vince,” she said. “Vince.”

She looked as if she had tried to fix herself up before she came to see him. The dress fit her very tightly and was as smooth as skin. Then I noticed she only had on one shoe.

“You’ve lost a shoe,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at me. “I promised you, and I’m sorry. I had to see him.” Her eyes were like buckshot in one of these games you used to find in Cracker-Jack boxes, rolling loosely, trying to find home. She was crocked to the hairline. “I sat there,” she said. “I waited. There was a fifth o’ wishkey in frigerdar-er-ater.”

I put one arm around her slim waist and led her toward the kitchen. She began to move her lips around the name, “Vince,” without speaking. She dropped her purse.

“What’s happening?” she said.

“A little bit of everything, I’m afraid.”

“You mad at me?”

“Yes.”

“I sorry.”

We reached the kitchen. I held her steady as we both looked at the body of Vince Gamba.

She shuddered and said softly, “He’s dead.”

I didn’t say anything.

She twisted and writhed in my arms. Small cries of fright were muted in her throat, and fright ruthlessly changed her expression. Her mouth was red confusion. Facing me, she fought to break free.

I tried to keep from feeling sorry for her. She was drunk, wishing she could be sober. It wouldn’t work.

“How did he die?” she gasped.

“He was murdered,” I said. There was no sense in trying to explain right then. I told her, anyway—how he had phoned me, that he had been drunker than she was. “Somebody found him lying passed out on the floor. They fixed a suicide picture; stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. His car was seen leaving the grounds not too long ago.”

She stilled. Her eyes seemed to clear somewhat.

“Why did you come here?” I said.

“You told me Vince was looking for me.” Her words were clearer. She was far from sober, but the shock of seeing Gamba had evidently touched her emotions harshly enough to bring her partially around. “I knew it must have been something serious.” She leaned back against my arms, her head wobbling. “I kep’ drinking. I don’t drink much, as a rule. Suppose that’s why I finally came here. What you tol’ me—it kept working on me. Vince and I agreed not to see each other.”

Her gaze crept around toward the body. Abruptly, she wrenched free and veered down the hall, thumping on the one bare foot. I walked after her. She entered the bedroom, sprawled backwards across the bed.

“What’m I going to do?” she whispered. She tried to lift her head without success. “Maybe it’s an accident—maybe he did it himself—maybe he….”

I said, “No. He knew something hot. He wanted to tell me. He was a serious guy, not the type to take his own life. You’ll realize that when you sober up and think about it. He was too damned serious. It cost him his life. It’s an old workhorse with a long gray beard, honey, but he knew something somebody couldn’t afford to let anybody else know.” I went over by the bed and looked down at her. “I read a letter you wrote to him, telling him it was all off.”

“I never loved him,” she said. “He couldn’t understand that. He kept telling me he’d never b’lieve it.”

“Your letter sounded as if you had cared plenty.”

She closed her eyes, lying motionless. “You don’t go around trying to hurt people,” she said. “I wanted to let him down easy.” Her eyes snapped open. “All right,” she said. “I’m no good—say it. Say it!”

“Take it easy,” I said.

The sheath dress was very tight. The skirt was twisted up across her soft thighs, and her small belly moved with her emotions. She arched her head back, her hands shoving up against the full thrust of her breasts. You could see how she was fighting inside, wanting to cry but not letting herself; trying to find a way out but discovering only solid black walls on every side. Trapped in the mind. Enclosed in a maze with no way out. Blaming herself.

I sat on the bed beside her.

“Easy, now,” I said, feeling helpless.

She rolled suddenly toward me, flung her arms around me, her face burrowed into my chest. Her body lay pressed against me, her fingers biting into me. Her voice was small, lost, afraid. “Help me.”

I laid her back on the bed, leaned above her face. Her eyes watched me with the fright like tiny flames in the deep pupils. What the hell can you tell them when they’re on a spot like this? From the outside, she was a lush piece of sex, lying sprawled across a bed. Only inside, she was a frightened human being, clawing at high smooth black walls, fighting for control.

“It’s rough,” I said. “This does put you on a spot, but we’ll see what we can do. Maybe it’s going to help. Getting drunk won’t help. Try to hang on, will you?”

Her fingers tightened on my arms. She watched me. The red lips parted and she breathed hot and not at all unpleasant whisky fumes into my face. “All right,” she said softly. “I’ll try. But help me. I’m scared. I don’t know what to do. It’s Carl—it must be Carl.”

“Maybe,” I said. “In fact, probably. But not for the reason you think.” I looked down at her. The face composed itself and the red mouth smiled hesitantly. The breasts swelled as she took a long breath.

“I like you, Lee. I like you an awfully lot.”

I patted her with my left hand. My palm patted bare flesh where the dress had twisted up to her hip. She didn’t move. I did, damned quickly. I stood up beside the bed with my heart socking my ribs. She lay there on her back, looking up at me with a faintly cockeyed smile. Drunk, she’d forgotten everything; the dead man, the works.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “I need you. Please stay for a while.”

“You’re tight as a coot,” I said. “I almost forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“That you’re drunk.”

Her moment of clarity had come and gone. The fog was in her eyes again. Her tongue was thick.

She patted the bed. “Lie down here—I wan’ tell you something.”

Something rattled from the back of the house. I turned quickly and headed for the kitchen. Her white purse was on the floor in the hall. I heard her moving on the bed. The bottles rattled again out there. My insides crawled and I went to the door, flung it open. A man leaped off the steps, running. I got out there. It was balloon-boy, lumbering through the dark toward the office. He would yell if I grabbed him.

I went back inside, stepped over Gamba’s body, and started for the bedroom. The white purse was gone from the hall. She was on the floor in the bedroom doorway, the purse in her lap, a bottle in her hand. She took another long pull, then held the bottle upside down, her eyes gone.

“Empty,” she said clearly. As I started for her, she passed out with a soft moan.

I hauled her to her feet, picked up her purse. I slung her into a fireman’s carry, rammed her left arm around and caught it with my right hand. She slobbered something against my neck.

Out by the car, I draped her across the seat and shoved her over. She slumped with her long legs awry. I got behind the wheel.

The office was dark as I drove past. He would be in there, watching. On the telephone.

It was too far to take her clear across town to the motel where she was staying. Too many questions would be asked, and I couldn’t answer them. I headed for her sister’s house.

She was talking to me, but neither of us would ever know what she said.