“Well, didn’t you?”
“Well, kind of. But now I’ll make it firm.”
“Do. And thanks, Miss Helm.”
He didn’t ask for her charges, but went back in the “office,” made out a check for twenty dollars, addressed it to her at home, went out in the hall, and dropped it in the mail slot.
“O.K., you have it all lined up: Chancit will pick up the car in the morning, Doris will remember it’s the Monday before Labor Day, the call to Mankato is on record with the time, and Helm’s call to you found you home, at a time she’d remember, and perhaps even made note of.”
He changed to dark coat, dark slacks, and dark blue shirt, and put on shoes with crepe soles. He studied himself in the mirror, then suddenly turned off the light and caught the sheen of his yellow hair. He rummaged around, found a dark cloth hat. He went to the living room and, without putting on any lights, sat down by the window. His watch said 10:25, and he made himself sit for an hour, being then all but a wreck. But when the time came to leave, he was himself again, acting with quick decision and no slightest sign of fear. He opened the door on a crack, peered out, and on seeing the coast was clear, stepped out into the hall, closing the door quietly. He tiptoed down the hall, the crepe soles making no noise. He didn’t bring up the freight car, but opened the door beside it and tiptoed down the stairs. On the ground floor he stepped into the hall again, opened the outside door on a crack. After peeping he stepped out, slipped down the alley, and walked up the street to the car. Unlocking, he got in and drove off, noting he could probably get in later to park in the same spot, for in view of the late hour, no more cars should be due. He used the condemned road, to check on his white spots, finding them easily visible, even in the dark, when he tried cutting his lights. It was around 12:30 when he pulled up by the Lilac Flamingo lot, and he gave an exclamation of satisfaction at seeing a place to park. He had feared the curb would be full, and it was, almost, but a few feet were clear, and he backed in, pulled up, cut his wheels, and then was snugly parked.
At once he locked up and got out, for another thing he feared was the conscientious policeman having a look around, and sure to be suspicious, at this hour, in this place, of a man in a parked car. He strolled down toward Pratt, stood staring at the ships tied up at their piers, then went strolling back. From the club came bursts of laughter, so he judged the show still went on. Then came a burst of hand-clapping, and he moved to the car, to be ready. Sure enough, after a moment Mr. Alexis came out of the rear door, and a parking attendant, in white smock, popped out of the shack. Mr. Alexis, who was in the same costume he had worn the previous night except for a pink tarboosh in place of the Homburg, handed something over, apparently car keys, and the attendant trotted to the maroon sedan. But then, also from the rear door, there came boiling out a preposterous apparition, in bolero with gold braid along its edges, feathered headdress, fish-net tights, and red shoes. It was Buster, looking pretty, shapely, and cheap, and obviously loaded for bear. “So O.K.!” she screamed at Mr. Alexis! “Go back to her! Who do you think gives a damn?”
Mr. Alexis said something Clay couldn’t hear, apparently to calm her down, but without noticeable success. “Divorce! Is that a laugh!” she went on, at the top of her voice. “It’s just a come-on, I tell you! She don’t mean divorce, she means you!”
But about that time the attendant backed out the car, to the illuminated space in the middle, and Mr. Alexis started for it. But when Buster grabbed him, Clay didn’t wait for more. Unlocking, he got in and drove off, heading for the condemned road, and in twenty minutes or so reached it, pulling to one side, stopping, and cutting his lights, but letting his motor run.
There followed a ghastly five minutes while he coughed from compressed excitement, and the car shook a little as the motor grumbled on. Then lights showed in his mirror, and a car shot by. He went into gear, let in his clutch, and raced to catch up. He had barely checked the license when he passed the first white spot, the one on the right-hand side. That meant pull to the left, and he did. Almost at once, it seemed, he passed the second white spot, and that meant pull alongside. He did, but perhaps came up too fast, as it seemed an eternity before the third white spot appeared. He had to wait for it, though, as it was placed where the fill was high enough, the water alongside deep enough, to accomplish what he intended. But at last there it was, and he squeezed down on the horn so it screamed. The lights, like the lights of the blue coupe, whipped crazily off to the right, leaving darkness, so he had to brake. By that time metal was clanking, to a man’s despairing yell. Then came a horrible splash, but just before it his heart stopped beating as a woman’s scream pierced the night.
He sat in a state of collapse at the realization Buster was in the car, and then his ear caught the whine of a spinning hubcap. He had to have it, he thought, or burn for leaving it there. He jumped out, ran around the car, saw it flashing, and grabbed it while trying not to hear the gurgles of air from the water down below. Then he circled his car, feeling wheel by wheel, to discover which hubcap was missing. But all his hubcaps were in place. In a panic by now, he jumped in with the hubcap, put on his lights, and started. Then his wits returned, and on the bridge he stopped, pitching the hubcap down in the slough. Then he drove on.
“It’s done, goddamit, it’s done, no one can ever prove how, so forget it! IT’S DONE, and life can go on! If that poor, sweet little tramp was there in the car with him, that’s tough, but you didn’t put her there, and life is like that, isn’t it? There’s nothing you can do now, so forget it, forget it, forget it!”
16
HE MUMBLED THAT AS he drove, but forgetting it turned out easier said than done, and his demoralized state continued all the way home. He found his parking space still clear, but had to battle the car into it, backing, pulling up, cutting his wheels, backing again, pulling up again, until he thought he would scream, before he succeeded in snugging in. Then came the “thirty-nine steps,” as he had called them in his anticipation—the walk to the Marlborough alley, on which if he met anyone, or at least someone he knew, it all would go by the board, alibi and everything else, and he might just as well cash his chips. He met no one—on the street, in the alley, on the stairs, or in the hallways, as he pad-padded to his door. At last, inside, he gave a gasp of relief, then raced for the bath, where everything came up, in endless spasms of retching. At last he could rinse out his mouth, go into the bedroom, and undress. He put on pajamas, crept into bed, pulled the covers over his head, and then remembered that one last thing he still had to do. He must put stopples in his ears to account for his failure to answer, in case his phone had rung: “I always use them—they blot out the noise.” It had sounded so casual, as rehearsed in his mind, but now merely seemed slick. However, he opened the package he’d bought at the drugstore, mashed a pair in his fingers, and stuffed them in. Saved, in the morning, they would prove he couldn’t have heard anything.
In bed again, he tried to think of Sally, to imagine himself with her, and how happy they would be, “once the damned thing has blown over.” He couldn’t seem to see her. What came to mind was Buster, the sweetish perfume she used, her softness as she unabashedly rubbed against him, and the spittly wetness of her kiss. And when at last he did manage to sleep, what woke him was her scream, all but splitting his ears, and easily going through stopples. In the morning he lay late, but then at last got up, bathed his bloodshot eyes, and after dressing went again to the drugstore, for breakfast. Buying the morning paper there, he found nothing in it at all about the previous night’s occurrence, and persuaded himself the car hadn’t been found—“may be two or three days before someone spots it, down underneath in that water.” But when he paid his check, the noon edition of The Pilot was just being rolled off the truck, and he reeled as he saw the headlines, which told how Mr. Alexis was “dead in car mishap,” but how “girl alleged foul play.” Buying one and reading as he walked home, he learned how Buster, told to jump by her companion, had managed t
o hurl herself out on the bank, where she lay for some moments unconscious. But what froze the blood in his veins was the brief paragraph that followed:
Under sedation at Channel City Hospital, Miss Conlon was not available for comment, and police refused to confirm or deny that she had observed the license number of the car which forced them off. However, as they promised a statement later, it is believed she did obtain the number, and that when it has been checked out, an arrest may be made.
“So there IS one thing worse than a girl getting killed in that car, and that’s a girl NOT getting killed. Boy, are you in the soup. You thought that hubcap could burn you, and now it turns out that it will—it’s twenty feet under water, and still it’ll pull the switch. Why the hell couldn’t you leave it? Why did you have to wait till you had it?”
He called Miss Helm, managed to sound like himself as he asked her to beg off for him, “with Hal Daley and the rest—just say I’m taking a day off.” She promised to take care of things for him and he thanked her once more “for what you did last night.” Then he hung up and lay on the bed, slavering at the mouth and wiping it out with tissues. A long time went by, and then in midafternoon his phone started to ring. He let it, but then when it rang a second time and after that a third, he felt he had to answer. He was startled to hear Sally, as it had been part of their plan that neither would ring the other “till everything quiets down.” However, she had been due to ring Buster at three o’clock in the morning to inquire if Mr. Alexis was there, and then, on learning he wasn’t, to call the police. Now, in spite of himself, Clay was sharp, telling her: “How many times must I say it? Your phone could be bugged! From—that other time! You know what I’m talking about!”
“Clay, I’m not calling from home! I’m in a phone booth out on the street! Now will you stop yacking at me and listen?”
“Did you put in the call to Buster?”
“I did, but haven’t you seen the papers?”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”
“Clay, I have to see you.”
“Listen, Sally, that’s all it needs! I—”
“Damn it, I have to see you!”
“O.K., I’ll pick you up and—”
“You will not. I’m coming to you!”
“No, Sally! Please!”
“Clay, today of all days, I can’t be hanging around on some street corner waiting for you! They’re after me to question me! The cops—and I can’t be where they can grab me! I’m coming to you—I’ll come in the back way but I’m coming! Now you stay there and wait for me!”
“Suppose the cops come for me?”
“It’s a chance I have to take—so you hear?”
“O.K., but get it over with!”
He opened the door on a crack, began walking around. In a few minutes it closed, and she was there in the room with him, crisp in a blue summer dress, a little white shell on her head. She didn’t offer her mouth, and he made no move to claim it. “Clay,” she said quietly, “I hate to say so, but this has to be good-by.”
“Has to be? It is. Until we start to fry.”
“... That’s what I came about.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s turned out.”
“Ah—Clay, I don’t intend to fry.”
“Have you told the judge about that?”
“Clay, will you listen to me?”
“O.K., shoot.”
“Don’t try to drag me in!”
“Drag you in? You are in!”
“Oh, no, Clay, not at all. There’s not one single, solitary thing to connect me with what you did—with Alec’s death—in any way, shape, or form. I can prove I had nothing to do with it—in ways I haven’t mentioned to you—all kinds of different ways, which will prove me innocent—which of course I really am. The way you messed it up, I certainly can’t blame myself.”
“... In what way did I mess it?”
“Leaving that girl to tell tales!”
“I didn’t know she was there—had no idea at all. She didn’t belong to be there. When I pulled out, she was having a row with him for going off without her!”
“Haven’t you read the papers yet?”
“Little. Not all.”
“They did have a row, so she told the cops, and she jumped in the car, to be mean. He headed for home, as he planned, telling her she was quite welcome, but her tagging along would cost him a million bucks in the settlement I would ask. So she changed her mind and made it up in the car, and he was to set her down when they got to Channel City and send her home by cab, fish-net tights and all. Then it happened. She says he told her to jump, which she was able to do because part of her meanness was refusing to fasten her seat belt, as he had begged her to do. Oh, she gave the cops an earful, really tore their hearts—including the license number of the car that forced them off. So that would appear to be you. Oh, boy! Messing it up? You—”
“Yeah? And what would you have done?”
“What would that gang have done?”
“What gang, for God’s sake?”
“The gang, Clay, that you kept talking about? That was going to rob a bank? And planned everything, down to the gnat’s heel. They—”
“Would have done what?”
“Knocked her in the head, I would think.”
“And that’s what you’d have done?”
“If it was me or her? You bet it’s what I’d have done.”
“Sally, I think you’re nuts.”
“Me nuts? Me nuts?”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t have.”
He repeated: “I didn’t know she was there. I did hear her scream, but supposed she went down with the car. But I wouldn’t have— I don’t do things like that.”
“Like that? How about killing Alec?”
“That was—different.”
“How different?”
“Damn it, he was your idea!”
“And so was she—or would have been.”
“I couldn’t have made myself do it!”
She switched around some moments, not quite so crisp or collected in her movements now, but still under control. “Well,” she went on in a moment, “that’s all water under the mill. You didn’t, that’s the main thing, so there’s no use talking about it. Do you have it straight, Clay, what I said before? Don’t try to drag me in, as it’s not going to work at all.”
“I have it straight, what you said and what you intend, or think you intend, at least. But now I’ll tell you something: if you think, after the way you’ve stood by me here now after it’s done—if you think I’m going to burn and keep my big mouth shut, so you go scot-free and on top of that get the money, you’re mistaken. Sally, we had a slip-up, and no one regrets it more than I do. But we were in it together, and that’s where we stay, my sweet. You’ll burn, you little bitch—because I’ll burn you. Now kindly get the hell out.”
“No! No! Don’t you try!”
“You started this thing! I’ll finish it!”
“I didn’t start it! You did!”
Control vanished then as she shook him, pleaded with him, and wailed. He said: “Your adrenaline’s acting up—excitement seems to affect you. You’re beginning to stink, and a rat knows a rattlesnake, baby. So, shove off.”
“You son of a bitch. You—”
But she cut off when he grabbed her, took her handbag away, unzipped it, and spilled it out on the table. Spotting his key, he pocketed it, then stuffed tissues, candy mints, handkerchiefs, memos, and the rest of the bag’s contents back into it. Then, handing it to her, he said: “Move, or I’m kicking you higher than—”
She went, and he watched her down the hall as she ran to the freight elevator. Then he closed the door.
“Why the hell haven’t they come?”
17
HE LAY DOWN, CLENCHING and unclenching his fists, trying to stop and not being able to. After a while his inside phone rang, and at first he flinched from answering, but then did, whispering to himself: “Th
is is it—they’ve come, and there’s not any hole you can hide in.” But it was Johnny, down in the basement, to say his car was back. When he looked at his watch it was five o’clock, and he went down to the street to buy a 5:30. The story was still on Page 1, blown up a little bigger, as it seemed the “mystery deepened” in regard to the motorist who had forced Mr. Alexis off the road. It turned out, however, when he read beyond the headlines, that the “mystery” was mainly in the reporters’ minds, as it hinged on the refusal of police to make public Buster’s information until they had “checked it out.” There was even a separate story on Captain David Walton, with an explanation of his position. “In cases of this kind,” he said, “we make it a rule not to give anything out until we give it a check, so innocent people don’t get caught in the backwash of what may be a false lead. The trouble is, when someone has been in an accident, especially a bad one at night, and they get a car number, or think they get a car number, maybe they don’t get it right, and for us to make public that number before we checked it out could just mean a barrel of trouble. Don’t worry, this looks just as fishy to us as it does to anyone else, but we don’t go off half-cocked.”
Back at the Marlborough, instead of going in through the lobby, he walked down the ramp to the basement, ostensibly to pick up his bill, which was tucked under the wiper, actually to talk with Johnny, as to the police, and whether they’d been around. He didn’t exactly know what “checking out” consisted of, but it seemed to mean an investigation of the car’s whereabouts at the time the accident occurred. He let himself notice a dent in his fender, a small thing the size of a quarter, that had been there some time, gave an exclamation of annoyance. “I meant to tell Roy about that, have him take it out—and forgot it. Did they ask about it, Johnny, or say anything at all when they brought the car back?” Not to him, said Johnny, not taking a great deal of interest. It was just such a lead as should have smoked Johnny out, inevitably start him talking, in case others, such as police, had done any asking that day. But Johnny didn’t respond, and so far as Clay could detect, no guile was in his face, such as must have been there if police had been around and enjoined him to silence. Baffled, Clay had to conclude that no check-out had yet been made, at least here, where the car was usually stored. He went up by the freight elevator, called Roy at Chancit. It seemed Roy had noticed the dent and had meant to drop him a note, along with the bill, and then kind of forgot it. It was no job to take out, he said— they could suage it and spot in the paint with no trouble. The whole thing would amount to less than ten dollars. Clay listened, giving plenty of openings to mention police if they had been around. Roy didn’t take the bait.