Marita climbed the stairs to her flat slowly, wondering if she was a fool. She hadn’t been at the Blue Moon since the night she met Benny there. But who was she fooling?
If you were an unsuccessful call-girl, it was easy to decide to be virtuous and turn your back on it. But, if you made a far better living at it than you could possibly make at anything else, it wasn’t so easy.
On the door was a note from Mrs. Gersteiner:
Man calling himself J. S. has called twice.
J. S. was John Silver, the detective she had hired to find Benny Rice. Perhaps he had something to report. But she wasn’t so sure now that she wanted to find Benny Rice. There was something decidedly peculiar about Benny.
She went into the bathroom and turned the tap. As she undressed she found it hard to resist the impulse to call Silver.
In the bath she soaped herself luxuriously. And suddenly she realized that she felt cleaner than she had for years.
As she realized once again what Benny meant to her she jumped out of the bath, scattering water in all directions like a dog shaking itself dry, and ran through to the phone.
The shiny cream phone slipped in her soapy hands, but she got Silver.
“Miss Herbert? I got news for you. I’ll come over right away.”
“Can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“That depends. You want me to say it over the phone?”
She hesitated. “No. Come up here.”
She dropped the phone in its cradle. Going back to the bathroom, she showered and dried herself.
When the buzzer went, she hadn’t even begun to dress. Silver must be the world’s fastest mover. She slipped a dress over her shoulders and pushed her feet into mules.
Silver came in looking her up and down appreciatively. “This job I like,” he said.
“Spill it,” said Marita briefly.
Letting his eyes play over her like a fire hose, Silver spoke absently but to the point. “Rice had his mind made up when he went to his apartment. That was obvious afterwards. If he was to shake me and everybody else, he’d have to go fast and far. So I assumed he’d gone straight to the airfield and took the first flight to anywhere.”
“Benny wouldn’t do anything as obvious as that.”
“Wouldn’t he? Lady, there are times when being subtle just gives people a chance to put a rope around your neck. The only answer to TTV is not being around when the cops start to get interested in you.”
“The police aren’t involved in this.”
“No? Looked to me as if this guy Rice thought they might be. Otherwise why run like a scalded cat?”
“Did you have something to say?” Marita inquired.
“Sure. He took the first flight to anywhere. Florida, first stop Washington. I guessed he’d jump ship at Washington and had a man check. He did. He got on a flight for—wait for it—Florida.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, he’s no fool. If you’re on a flight to Florida and jump ship, the last place anybody will expect you to go is Florida. Only if you’re being tailed at the time, it’s no good.”
“So Benny Rice is in Florida?”
“He’s living just outside Miami. I know where, but I haven’t had anybody watch him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not going anywhere. Either he was traced to Miami, in which case he can be traced from there, or he wasn’t, and he’d be crazy to move.”
Silver’s aggressive assurance irritated Marita. He spoke and acted as if he had a private line to God. Nevertheless, she had to ask:
“Why would he be crazy to move?”
“When the cops are looking for somebody, they check transport. Airfields, seaports, bus and train depots. Anybody who keeps running gets caught. You’re smart, you find a hole and pull it in after you.”
“Suppose Benny Rice thinks one step further than you?”
“Then he isn’t in Miami. Say, lady, what’s an old guy like that to you?”
He had moved close as if merely for emphasis. Without appearing to move fast his hands were on her waist.
Marita shook herself impatiently, without managing to break his grasp. “Get out,” she said dispassionately. “Behave yourself or get out.”
“Who are you fooling, lady? Think I’d work for anybody without finding out about her?”
“I hired you to do a certain job. Apart from that, as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead.”
“I could come alive.”
Marita broke loose and in the same movement clawed a tiny gun from a drawer in the table. “Out,” she said. She had shown neither fear, interest nor disgust.
Silver could still grin. “You owe me a lot of money. You don’t have to pay it.”
“I prefer to.”
His grin faded. “O.K. But what’s wrong with me? Am I losing my fatal fascination?”
“I don’t know. I never saw you with any.”
Surprise and disbelief grew in his eyes. “You’re in love with the old guy,” he murmured. “Well, can you beat that?”
“What’s that address?” Marita asked.
Marita waved again and started to wade toward him. Her silver swimsuit gleamed in the afternoon sun.
Benny watched her with the cool pleasure of his years. He could hardly be a hot lover at his time of life. He could take pleasure in the perfection of her proportions; however, he could have taken just as much pleasure in her beauty if she had been some other man’s wife or mistress.
Water glistened on her golden skin as she dropped on the sand beside him. “Why don’t you swim, Benny?”
“I think I’ve been peeped,” he murmured.
She seized his arms and held tight as though by her own determination she could ward off the rest of the world. “They’ll never find us,” she said.
“On the contrary,” said Benny mildly, “they’re sure to find us if you stay with me, Marita. If you really want to help me, please leave me.”
“No. Never.”
Benny sighed. The certainty of defeat was on him, or he would have tried something. You could always get rid of a woman—couldn’t you?
“Marita,” he said gently, sympathetically. “I don’t love you, you know.”
“No,” she said bitterly. “You’re the only man I ever wanted to love me, so naturally you wouldn’t.”
“You’re too young to think like that, Marita. I’m four times your age, and I think a lot more of the world than you do.”
“Benny, why don’t you tell me? Can’t I help you? Can’t I do anything?”
“Yes. You can go home. Then maybe I’ll have a chance.”
“Why do you talk like that? What harm am I doing?”
“That detective of yours knew I was in Miami. When they start looking for me they’ll find him. They’ll find out that you went to Miami. They’ll look for you and find me.”
“But we left Miami.”
“Yes. But we’re still so near that if they start searching in Miami and really mean to find us, they’ll find us. And if we take a trip on a plane, ship, bus or train, they’ll find us.”
“Benny, what did you do? What’ll it mean if you’re caught?”
“Death,” he said simply.
She caught her breath. She wanted to cry, but it had been so long since she cried she had forgotten how.
“I still love life,” he said. “I’m old, but I’m sound. If they left me alone, I could have another twenty years, easily. Maybe thirty. I could live longer than the whole life of your life, Marita—if they let me. But I must be getting old, old in spirit, or I’d fight. I’d give you the slip and find myself another hole to hide in.”
“You won’t?” she said sharply. “Promise you won’t?”
He shook his head. “I won’t promise, Marita. I should go on fighting—and once I can collect what moral courage I have left, I will go on fighting. I’ll beat them yet—”
A hand fell on his shoulder. Marita screamed, and through her scream a voice said:
“Benjamin Rice, I charge you with the murder of Ralph Charles Coleman.”
Benny looked up and smiled.
“Allow me to tell you, Mr. Rice,” said the lawyer frostily, “that that attitude cuts no ice. I have been retained to defend you. I shall do so to the best of my ability, whatever insults you heap on me.”
“I expect you will,” said Benny, “since you’re prepared to accept in payment for your services the earnings of a prostitute.”
Kensel breathed deeply. “Considering what Miss Herbert is doing for you,” he said, “that remark reveals the lowest possible moral character.”
“It reveals the truth.”
Kensel swallowed. “Rice, can’t you realize that girl… that girl loves you—” He had managed to say it, though the effort made his face pink with embarrassment.
“Apparently I’m not to be allowed to forget it,” Benny said.
He was fighting now. It was too late to run; he had nothing but his wits left. First, he had to try to get rid of this man.
“Marita Herbert is one of the finest women I know,” said Kensel. “It passes my comprehension how she could be so deceived in a man like you. But since she feels as she does, I am prepared to try to believe there is some good in you.”
“That’s big of you,” said Benny. “I don’t want you, Kensel. I’m going to plead guilty.”
“You’re not allowed to plead guilty.”
“I’m going to conduct my own defense, then.”
“That’s your privilege.”
“So why don’t you get out?”
“For Miss Herbert’s sake I am going to do my best for you. I hope you go to the gas chamber, but I am going to do my best to see that you don’t.”
He was, too. Benny was silent, planning a new tack. This one was no good. Marita had done a good job on Kensel. If she hadn’t won him over to Benny’s side, she’d won him over to hers.
“Since I was goaded into speaking plainly just now,” said the lawyer, his pink cheeks even pinker, “I may as well say one thing more. Your crime in murdering a man like Ralph Charles Coleman twenty years ago—as I have no doubt you did—is such a particularly beastly one that I wish I were prosecuting you. You knew what you were doing. For a mere three thousand dollars, you silenced one of the great voices of the century.”
“He was an old bore,” said Benny reflectively.
“The greatest authority on malaria in the world… the man responsible for more saving of life than all—”
“They’ll never convict me, and you know it,” said Benny.
“On the contrary, there’s a better than even chance that they will. Although the police were quite satisfied at the time that Coleman shot himself, the recent examination of the room shows quite clearly that he fell and lay still and was shot afterwards. There can’t be any doubt about that, and you can’t explain it.”
“Why should I explain it?”
“Because, if you don’t, you’ll be convicted. How can a man commit suicide if he falls first and then gets shot?”
Benny shrugged. “He got up, shot himself and fell down again.”
“No. The evidence in Coleman’s study, which hasn’t been used since, is absolutely clear. There was only one fall. And afterwards he was shot. He was shot as he lay on the ground. He couldn’t have done that himself.”
No, he couldn’t, Benny thought. He didn’t. I did it. Funny how they haven’t found out a dozen other queer and significant things about that day twenty years ago, yet they’re absolutely sure of that.
These marvelous police methods couldn’t be so marvelous after all. Twenty years ago the police had been convinced of one lie. Now they were convinced of another. In another twenty years, maybe they’d find out the truth.
The jailer spoke from the cell door. “Miss Herbert to see you, Rice.”
“You can go,” said Benny to the lawyer. He couldn’t bring himself to be cruel to Marita, and if Kensel saw them together he might see through Benny’s act.
“She wants me to stay. She wants to talk to you with me present.”
Marita came in like a ray of sunlight. Another defense broke down in Benny. Let it go. He wasn’t getting anywhere with his efforts to get rid of Kensel, anyway.
Benny took her hands and smiled.
Beside him, Kensel choked at the sudden change in him.
“Three-quarters of the press is on our side,” Marita said eagerly. “They say you’re over a hundred and harmless. There’s no suggestion that you committed any crime in the last twenty years. They say— Benny, I still can’t believe it. I don’t believe you ever killed anybody. You couldn’t.”
“But I did,” said Benny gently. “Marita, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to disgust Kensel so that he’ll drop the case. But he won’t. So let’s try something else. Marita, you want what I want, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I want to die.”
“No!” Marita whispered, while Kensel stared dazedly at this old leopard who had suddenly changed his spots. He was kind and gentle with Marita.
“You can’t,” Marita said with more conviction. “You don’t. You love life. You still love life.”
“Yes,” Benny admitted, “if I’m allowed to live it my own way, in freedom, Marita, you know I’m not going to be acquitted. Once the police started tracing the history of Benny Rice, I was finished. They traced my life to the time I became caretaker to Coleman, and naturally, just in passing, they had another look into his suicide. Twenty years ago Coleman wrote letters and made phone calls that convinced people he was going to commit suicide. And while I was around I was able to direct the investigations so that the official conclusions came out the way I wanted them. But what can you do when the police can go back to the scene of the crime and from the vibrations damped by wood, metal and textiles twenty years ago, reconstruct what happened then?”
“Some of what happened twenty years before,” said Kensel.
There was such significance in his tone that Marita stared at him, puzzled, and Benny with sudden foreboding.
“I had only seen you acting like a first-degree heel, or I’d have guessed long ago,” the lawyer said. “You’re Coleman, of course.”
Benny had seen it coming and decided not to deny it. “Yes. And now do you see why I want to die? I’m Coleman. A great man, you said, Kensel. But murder’s the same whether a useless old moron like Benny Rice kills Coleman or Coleman kills the useless old moron. It’s the same crime—homicide. I’ve had twenty years as Benny Rice, and I’d do anything for twenty more. But if I’m to die, or worse still, go to prison, I’d rather stay Benny Rice.”
Marita was frowning. “It’s nothing to me who you are. I knew you as Benny Rice, and I don’t care which you are.”
“I know you don’t, Marita. But I do. Kensel, will you get me the death penalty—knowing that’s what I want?”
“I’d like to get you Rebirth,” Kensel said quietly.
Marita jumped convulsively.
Benny laughed. “No, thank you. To get me Rebirth you’d have to get me off first, by showing there wasn’t any murder twenty years ago. Then you’d have to show I was Coleman, not Rice. Then you’d have to—”
“Just a minute,” said Kensel sharply. “I’ve just thought of something. If we can show you’re Coleman, not Rice, the motive for murder disappears. You didn’t kill Rice for your own three thousand dollars—a tiny fraction of your bank balance. You’ve got to show you’re Coleman.”
“On the contrary,” Benny said, “I’ve got to stay Rice. Rice was a moron, by any reckoning. The charge against him can’t be anything more than a brutal, simple crime. The case against Coleman—against me—is that I formulated a complicated plot, writing letters and phoning people falsifying all the records relating to myself, with the object of having the dead body of Rice taken for mine. It would also follow, since he was exactly the same age as me, and since I employed him weeks before, and since his face was changed to mine and
mine to his, that there was a long-standing murder plot to kill a poor old derelict and substitute his body for mine, so that I could disappear.”
Marita was looking lost and unhappy. In the last few minutes, somehow, she had lost Benny. The strange love affair between her and Benny had been unequal in many ways, but it had seemed to balance. The affair between her and Ralph Charles Coleman, who might have been a great man but who sounded an old bore, as Benny said, didn’t balance at all.
Kensel was looking unhappy too. “Well, why did you do it?” he demanded.
Benny considered. “For two pins I’d tell you,” he said. But Kensel knew he was lying. Kensel knew he would never tell anybody.
Kensel was wrong. There came a moment in Benny’s trial when the possibility that he was Coleman and not Benny Rice was mentioned. There came a moment when it looked as if he might get life imprisonment instead of death.
There came the moment when the judge asked if Benny had anything to say before he passed sentence.
The verdict was guilty; the sentence could only be imprisonment or death.
“Yes,” said Benny. “Yes, I have.”
There was a murmur in court. Throughout the trial he had remained as inarticulate as a man with his VTC rating might be expected to be. Now he spoke strongly and clearly and looked like his own son.
“The possibility that I might be Coleman and not Rice has been mentioned,” Benny said. “Nothing came of it, because it was so manifestly ridiculous. Is it ridiculous now?”
The murmur in court grew to a roar. Everyone knew Rice’s I.Q. and VTC. This wasn’t Benny Rice speaking.
“I am going to tell you,” said Ralph Charles Coleman, “why I killed Benny Rice.
“I did not want Rebirth.
“I wanted to live my life to the full and die when it was over. When a man goes for Rebirth, does he survive? No. He remembers nothing of his previous life, of his own personal history. He becomes another person.
“I didn’t want to become another person. I wanted to live until I died. Many people are like me, feel as I do, but they are silenced by pride in being thought worthy of Rebirth, and fear of the eternal night. Rebirth is a postponement. Even if the thing they become remembers nothing of the thing they were, at least there is no ending—yet. They surrender their lives at seventy, at eighty, instead of risking death at any moment if they chose to try to live longer.
IMMORTALITY FOR SOME Page 4