The Nothing Man Page 12

  “Really,” I said. “Honest and truly. And you have your whole life to prove it to me.”

  “Mmmm,” she said, and she wriggled. “Promise me something, Brownie? Don’t die before I do, I wouldn’t want to live without you, darling! Without your love.”

  “I promise,” I said. And after a moment I added, “We will die together, Deborah. That is the way it will be. When you die, I will die.”

  “Will you, Brownie? Would you really want to?”

  “I don’t think,” I said, “it will be a matter of wanting.”

  We drank. I kept filling our glasses. She asked me if my legs didn’t get awfully stiff from driving, and wasn’t I awfully tired. I said that they did indeed, and that I didn’t get so much tired as tense. As soon as I got limbered up and relaxed a little…

  “Brownie,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I—nothing.”

  Several minutes passed; five or it might have been ten.

  “Brownie—”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  We went on drinking. I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. Finally she mumbled something about getting a sleeping pill, and she started to get up. Then she fell back, letting her head slide down into my lap.

  She stared up at me squinting, drowsy and dizzy. One of her fingers wobbled and wavered, pointing at me. “Y-You know what? Y-You j-jus’ got one eye. P-Poor Brownie o’ny got one eye.…”

  “The other one is turned inward,” I said. “It is examining my soul.”

  “Mmmm?” she mumbled. “Jus’—just got—”

  Her eyelids closed, and her lips parted and stayed parted. She slept.

  I carried her into the bedroom and put her on the bed. I loosened her brassiere, took off her shoes, and pulled the spread over her. Then I went back to the lounge.

  I poured another drink, but I didn’t take it. Exhaustion suddenly overpowered me, and in a split second I was sound asleep.…

  When I awakened, the phone was ringing and she was kneeling at the side of the lounge, shaking me.

  I started to sit up. I flopped back down again, yawning and rubbing my eyes. I looked at her, dully, wondering who she was and how she had got here.

  “The phone, darling,” she said. “Hadn’t you better answer it?”

  “Phone?”

  “It’s been ringing a long time, Brownie. Shall I answer it for you?”

  That brought me awake, or much more awake than I was. It brought back my memory. I asked her the time, and she said it was a quarter of three.

  “Probably the paper.” I sat up, yawning. “Let ’em ring. If they knew I was back, they’d wonder why I hadn’t come in. Might want me for something even this late.”

  “All right, Brownie. Want to go back to sleep again?”

  “Yes—no,” I said. “How about some coffee?”

  “I’ve got some made, darling. I’ll get it right away.”

  She went out into the kitchen. The phone stopped ringing. I sat looking down at the floor, at the blanket which must have been covering me.

  It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Neither it nor the fact that my shoes were off and the buckle of my belt unfastened. When you have drunk as long and as much as I have, you do a great many things without remembering or thinking about them. Just automatically. Frequently I have undressed and put myself to bed without ever knowing that I had done it.

  So this, the condition I had awakened in, was doubtless more of the same. But so long as she was awake, it seemed like a good idea for me to be. She might be getting curious. She might become actively curious if she had the opportunity. Maybe she already had.

  I washed while the coffee was heating and held brief and silent confab with that strange guy in the mirror. He looked a little haggard this morning—I suspected an incipient case of cirrhosis of soul—but withal he seemed reasonably at peace. He was strongly of the opinion that Deborah should not be killed.

  “Unnecessary, my dear man,” he advised me. “I suspect, as you did originally, that she is not greatly endowed with sharpness. She is not stupid, of course; she can be not-sharp and not-stupid, also. She is just a very natural, very lovely, very simple and straightforward woman.”

  “Yeah, sure. But she said—”

  “A manner of speaking; we all say things like that. But—assume that it was not. Let us say that she saw the connection between the poetry and Ellen’s death. It didn’t change her love for you. She went right on loving and trusting you. Would she, then, feeling about you as she does, suddenly turn on you because of something you cannot help? And—to make another far-fetched assumption—suppose she did? You have an airtight alibi, haven’t you? You couldn’t have crossed the bay that night. So, what if she should—?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know to all the questions. The deal’s so goddamned screwed up and—and I can’t take chances—and there’s Tom Judge. I don’t know why the hell they haven’t nabbed him already.”

  “What about Tom Judge, anyway? The fact that there’s another murder and another poem while he’s in custody won’t necessarily establish his innocence of the first one.”

  “It will throw considerable doubt upon the matter of his guilt. I’ll do the rest. After I talk with Mr. Lovelace, and Mr. Lovelace talks with Mr. Stukey, Mr. Judge will be released. And promptly.”

  “We-ell…I suppose so. But—want to make a small bet? I’ll bet you don’t kill her. You can’t.”

  “You think not, huh?”

  “I know not. You can’t kill her, Brownie. If she gets killed, it won’t be by you.”

  She’d whipped up some toast and scrambled eggs along with the coffee, and it tasted better than any food I’d eaten in a long time. She’d already had a bite, she said, but she had coffee with me. We sat at the table, smoking and drinking coffee, making quite a bit of conversation but saying very little. She hadn’t slept a great deal, she said. She’d had a hard time sleeping in recent years and had come to depend heavily on sleeping pills. Having taken none before retiring, she’d been pretty wakeful despite the booze.

  We moved in to the lounge after a while, and she sat with her legs drawn up, her head resting against my shoulder.

  “Brownie,” she said. “Am I keeping you from anything? If there’s anything at all you have to do—”

  “I’m doing it,” I said. “This is what most needs doing right now.”

  “I thought you might get me that toothbrush…if you’re going out. I could use one.”

  “I may have to go out later on,” I said. “I’ll get whatever you need then.”

  It occurred to me suddenly that it might have been Stukey calling a while before. He might already have Tom Judge. But…no, it wasn’t likely; it must have been the paper checking on me. Stukey wouldn’t have stopped with a call. Knowing me as he did, he would have come out to see if I was there.

  We drank, or rather, I did. Deborah barely sipped at her glass. The afternoon—what there was left of it—slipped away and darkness came. And she never asked that we—that we go—

  Deborah stirred lazily. She stretched, arching her breasts, and stood up. She asked me if I wouldn’t like her to fix something to eat, and I said, well, I would have to give the matter some thought. We were discussing it when the phone rang.

  I glanced at the clock: seven straight up. There wouldn’t have been anyone at the paper for hours.

  I picked up the receiver. It was Stukey.

  “We got him, keed. It’ll knock you flat when you hear who it is.”

  He told me who it was. Tom Judge. It did not surprise me in the least.

  “Good God!” I said, putting a good heavy exclamation mark behind the phrase. “It’s incredible, I never liked the stupid jerk, but I wouldn’t have thought—Has he confessed yet, Stuke?”

  “There ain’t hardly been time yet. We just pulled him in. But he’s our boy, all right, pal. He fits all the specifications, and he’s got that old gui
lty look written all over him.”

  “And he’s been identified, of course? By the cab driver.”

  “We-ell, no.” He hesitated. “The taxi angle didn’t pan out. We picked him up on an anonymous tip. Came in on the switchboard, and that dumb ox we got workin’ there didn’t trace—”

  “What about his wife?” I said. “She admits he wasn’t at home that night?”

  “We-ell”—again a pause—“no. But, o’ course, she’s lyin’.…He’s it, Clint; I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles. How soon’ll you be down?”

  It was my turn to hesitate, and I did, lengthily. Then I let him hear an uncomfortable laugh.

  “This one kind of throws me, Stuke,” I said. “If it was anyone else but him—another Courier employee. You see what I mean? There’s no real evidence against him. Suppose you had to turn him loose, and I had to go on working with the guy?”

  “Well, yeah. But, keed, I know this baby is—”

  “You knew the same thing about me. Remember?”

  “Naw! No, I didn’t,” he protested. “I couldn’t find you anywhere and I figured you was the only one with a motive, and—and I was sore. But I knew you hadn’t done it as soon as I cooled off. I didn’t have that ol’ hunch like I got about this guy. Why, hell, Clint, I—”

  “I’m not throwing it up to you,” I said. “I’m just pointing up the possibility that you might be wrong about Judge.…I think I’d better steer clear of this for the moment, Stuke. Anyway—unless Judge cracks before then—I want to talk with Mr. Lovelace before I get personally involved.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said grudgingly. “I see what you mean.”

  “He’d be damned sore, you know, if Judge wasn’t guilty. He’ll probably be damned sore, in any case. The idea of a Courier man being a murderer won’t sit at all well with the old boy.”

  “No.…” There was a thoughtful silence. “I guess he won’t like it much. But, looky, keed, I ain’t playing hotsy-totsy with no murderer just because—”

  “You’re damned right you’re not,” I said. “If you did, you’d have me on your tail. All I’m saying is that I’d better keep out of the frammis until I talk to Lovelace, unless Judge spills in the meantime. You can hold him seventy-two hours, can’t you?”

  “Well, sure. But—”

  “I’ll let it ride, then,” I said. “I’ll talk to Lovelace in the morning and get in touch with you afterward. I’d do it tonight, but we can’t break the story before morning, anyway, and Lovey gets pretty hot if he’s bothered at night.”

  Stukey grunted, cursed under his breath. He said, “Well, I sure as hell hate to…What you think, keed? I ought to go pretty easy on this character until you get the word? Just kind of leave him alone and let him stew?”

  “I wouldn’t want to advise you,” I said. “I don’t have much use for Judge, and—well, you know, my own wife and all. I might give you the wrong dope.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure. Well”—he sighed—“you’ll buzz me in the morning, then?”

  “As soon as I talk to Lovelace.”

  We said good night and hung up. I was reasonably confident that he would give Tom little trouble tonight. And by morning…

  By morning?

  She knelt down in front of me, resting her elbows on my knees. “Brownie. Is it—is there something wrong?”

  “They think they’ve got the man who killed Ellen,” I said. “One of the boys from the paper. I—it’s hard to believe that he’s guilty.”

  “Poor Brownie. It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it? Want another drink, darling? Something to eat?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think I do.”

  “Why don’t you get out for a while, darling? Ride around and get a little fresh air. You must be getting awfully restless.”

  “Well, I—”

  “You do that, Brownie.” She cocked her head to one side, smiling at me. “Pretty please? I’ll lie down while you’re gone.”

  I grabbed her in my arms. I hugged her, burying my face in her hair. “God,” I said. “Jesus, God, Deborah. If you only knew—”

  “I do know,” she said. “You love me. I love you. I know that, and—that’s enough.”

  “I wish it was as simple as that,” I said. “I wish—”

  “It is, Brownie. It is that simple.”

  I kissed her.

  I left the house and drove away.

  I drove up on the hill first, up into the Italian section of town, where I had a few drinks at a bar. Then I bought a bottle in a liquor store, pulled the car onto a side street, and sat there drinking alone in the dark.

  I drank for a while. I wondered…about her, about Ellen. About myself.

  Why? I asked. Why had I done what I had to Ellen? That was a mere by-phrase with her—the “you burn me up.” An imbecile would have known that, and I was not, by the most exaggerated estimate, an imbecile. I had had to kill her—perhaps—and perhaps I would have to kill Deborah. But the other…

  Was it because…well, hadn’t she always been hysterically afraid of fires? And Deborah—wasn’t she morbidly afraid of dogs?

  I tried to look at myself squarely, to think the thing through. I couldn’t do it. Something kept getting in the way, bending my vision around into a circle; and while I was in that circle I was not of it. It did not touch me. Between the man who wanted to look and the man to be looked at was a heavy curtain. Drawn, of course, by the inner man.

  It was now after nine o’clock. I gave up the searching and started home. I wasn’t going to kill her; I knew that much, at least. There was no need to—no real reason—and I wasn’t. And…

  And suddenly there was a reason, many of them, and I was going to do it. The two-way pull had me to itself. All resistance had ended abruptly, and I was swung far out into that other world. There was nothing to hold me back. It was as though she had suddenly ceased to exist.

  I let the car coast into the yard quietly, the motor stilled. I eased the door of the house open. Silently, I went in.

  The kitchen had been cleaned up and the dishes put away. The living-room had been swept and put in order. I hesitated, looking around, and it was ridiculous to feel that way, in view of what I intended doing, but I was troubled, worried about her.

  To have left her alone, in this isolated railroad-side shack.…She’d have been helpless, although she’d have doubtless tried to fight. And if there’d been a scuffle, the house might be like this. Put to rights, and…

  I went into the bedroom.

  I heaved a sigh of relief.

  She was all ri—she was there. Stretched out on the bed on her stomach. She was lying with her face in the pillow, her arms akimbo on it, the horsetail of corn-colored hair hanging down to one side.

  So quiet. So peaceful and calm and trusting. So…quiet.

  Actually, she must have been one of those nervous sleepers. You could see how she had been balled up tight; you could see it by the way the sheets were wrinkled and the mattress depressed. Now, finally, she had straightened out, her body stretched out full length. But she was still tense, her fingers sticking out rigidly, her whole body stiff, unbending, motionless.

  That’s how she lay there, and I heaved a sigh of relief, and I killed her.

  I stood over her, staring down, studying her position: the way her neck formed an unsupported bridge between the pillow and her shoulders.

  I stooped down at her side, balling my hand into a fist. I raised it, brought it down hard.

  There was a dull pop, and her neck sagged and her head bent backward.

  I picked up her purse, put the poem in it, lifted her in my arms and carried her out to the car.

  It was all right. It was a game again. I had been forced to play and with an inordinately heavy handicap. And I had won, and she perforce had lost. But…

  But already I was feeling the emptiness, the lifelessness.

  And off in the not-too-distant distance, it began to move toward me…The withered and dying world, the va
st and empty desert where a dead man walked through eternity.

  I reached the dog pound.

  I threw her over the wall.

  15

  I…I am going to get through this part very quickly. About the next morning, that is, the discovery of the body—what was left of it—and…and so on. I got through it rather well at the time. I had the crutch of work—pressure—and Tom Judge’s situation. And I had to do it. And it was a game. Now, however—

  Now, I shall have to get it over with quickly.

  I must do so.…

  The story broke about five minutes before deadline, and I handled it. It was short, thank God. The paper was already made up, and there was only one brief yarn that the news editor could yank. So this one had to be short also. There wasn’t a whole lot to say, for that matter, since the body had only been discovered a few minutes before.

  Those half-starved dogs were always fighting and raising hell, and the Peablossoms—the old couple—hadn’t investigated the racket until morning. By that time, of course, there wasn’t much left of…Well, they’d identified her by the contents of her purse: by, among other things, a nearly empty box of sleeping pills with her name on it.

  I say they’d done it, meaning the cops, not the Peablossoms. They’d also found the poem in her purse.

  There was no way of knowing how long she’d been dead, whether she’d been killed there and tossed into the stockade or whether she’d been brought there after being killed. The only clue to the murderer was the poem.

  The Peablossoms hadn’t heard a car during the night, but then, they wouldn’t have heard one with the dogs carrying on. There were a great many footprints and tire tracks around the place. Far too many to be of value as clues.

  Well, I wrote the story. Then Dave and I were called into Lovelace’s office for a conference.

  He was in a very bad humor, and he took it out on Dave. This “Judge fellow.” He’d always known he was no good, should’ve been fired long before. Dave should’ve fired him. Now he was a murder suspect—a Courier man under arrest for murder! Shocking. Inexcusable.

  And Deborah Chasen—that woman! She, it appeared, was also Dave’s fault. An editor was supposed to know what was going on, wasn’t he? He was supposed to have news sources, people who kept him informed? Well, why, then, hadn’t Dave kept track of her, a woman “posing” as a friend of the Lovelaces? Should’ve known she was back in town. Should’ve known she’d get into trouble. Now, she’d been killed, a woman identified with the proud name of Lovelace, and…