by Gil Brewer
I stood there in a land of trance, till I’d gone over every angle, and the hot coal of the cigarette began to burn my lips. I spat it out.
“Mr. Ruxton?”
I hadn’t heard her come across the lawn. I wondered why in hell she was calling me “Mr. Ruxton,” and turned on the ladder. She stood there, smiling up at me. A medium-sized guy carrying a small black bag stood beside her.
“Mr. Ruxton,” she said. “This is Doctor Miraglia, Mr. Spondell’s doctor. I told him what I was having done, and he thinks it’s an excellent idea.”
I came down the ladder, taking long quiet breaths, trying to get a good look at him. He had a polite little smile and a clean, well-scrubbed look. He wore gray slacks and a white shirt. His face was round and earnest looking, and rimless glasses rode a little low on a pug nose. He had thick black hair. He was maybe forty. I shook his hand.
He nodded in a very polite way and said, “I believe this is a fine idea Shirley has, Mr. Ruxton. It hadn’t occurred to me. But since our tough old boy won’t go to a hospital, this will give Shirley a little more freedom around the place.”
“It should make things easier,” I said.
He looked up at the coconut palm, just to be looking someplace, then at me again, very polite. Then he turned and smiled briefly at Shirley. “I’ll be very interested to see how it works when it’s finished,” he said. His voice was mild and easygoing, gentle. He probably had a great way with the bed-patients. He looked at me, the glasses glinting a little. “Reason I wanted to meet you,” he said, “I wanted to say, be gentle with the old boy when you explain about this intercom system and how it works. He’ll probably get rambunctious, and try to order you around, and he won’t want to listen. Be gentle but stern—and make sure he knows how to operate it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t you worry.”
“There won’t be any trouble, Doctor,” she said.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve got to run. Glad to have met you, Mr. Ruxton. If I have any trouble with our television, I’ll know who to call.”
“Any time. Twenty-four hour service.” I felt like a blabbermouth fool, saying that, and looked at her to see how she was doing. She was doing fine.
“He’s a rough old bird,” Miraglia said.
I didn’t speak. He nodded again, glanced at her, and they turned and walked along toward the front of the house. He was explaining something to her. She kept nodding, but I saw the stiffness of her shoulders and knew his being here had worried her.
In a few minutes she was back. “There was nothing I could do,” she said. “He showed up and I never knew he was coming back. Said he was passing by the house, so he decided to drop off a fresh supply of medicine. Then I had to tell him about you being here, and he wanted to meet you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s perfect. Just keep acting natural. Think like I told you. Everything on the up and up.” Some of the tightness went away from around her eyes. She relaxed and gave a little sigh. “Jack,” she said, “I’ve just got to know how we’re going to do this. It keeps hanging over my head.”
“What ideas you got?”
She lowered her voice. It was coming into midtwilight now, and she looked terrific. The sun had turned into reds and purples out there over the Gulf, with long shooting lines of crimson, like wild fire up across the skies. Some of the colors got into her hair, and played along her body, accentuating the curves. I wanted to take her in my arms, and just hold her and feel the way she’d stir against me. I wanted her bad again. It was primitive and hot. Her lips were parted a little and I knew how they would be.
She said, “I can read you like a book.”
“Start wearing a barrel, then.”
“Maybe I’d better.” She moved her hip a little, and it was worse than before.
“Cut it out,” I said. “I’ll throw you on the ground.”
“Wish you would.”
I took hold of the ladder, looking up at the palm tree.
She said, “If you say the TV set on the ceiling is out, then all right. I just don’t go for this ‘no air’ idea of yours. I was thinking maybe he could take a bad fall. Something not so obvious.”
“It’s got to be obvious. That’s the angle.”
“But don’t you see? I mean—unless I broke a leg and couldn’t get to him, how would it work? It’s my job to watch him, Jack—all the time.”
“Yeah.”
“Unless we bolixed up the oxygen tanks, somehow. Maybe that would be good.”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t last a minute. And I’m damned if you’re going to break one of those legs.”
“All right, Einstein—how, then?”
I said, “Walk toward the house. I’ll carry the ladder. I want to put a speaker on the side of the house, anyway—so I can check there. Now, listen. It’s going to be perfect.”
“It’s got to be perfect.”
“Yeah. First of all, there’s going to be a patsy—somebody with the blame on him. That’s the best way, see? Because then they won’t look any further. If they know how it happened and who actually caused it, then it’s all over. Right?”
“I don’t believe I understand, Jack.”
“The blame’s going to be on me,” I said. “It’s as simple as that.”
She stopped walking. “On you?”
We had reached the house. I stuck the ladder up and crawled up two rungs, speaking low. “I’m not taking any real chance. Unless something goes wrong. And I don’t see how anything can go wrong. It’s going to be obvious you’ve done everything you can for Victor. You’re fixing him up with television, and the house is wired so you can hear him calling no matter where you are. So what’s the obvious thing?”
She stared up at me. “I can’t hear him?”
“Right.” I came down by her again. “You don’t hear him. He’s calling weakly. I heard him call, remember. It’s faint. If you’re not damned close by, you’ll miss it. Out here, for example. So that’s how come the intercom, and he’s using the intercom. As far as anybody’s concerned, you never heard a thing. You can be standing there looking at him, for all it matters. We’ll work that out. But it’s going to be that clean.”
“I don’t understand at all, Jack,”
“I’m going to fix that unit by his bed so it goes on the blink. And it’ll be my fault.”
“But they’ll find it.”
“Certainly they’ll find it. But it’ll be fixed in such a way that it won’t be on purpose. See? Just plain carelessness on my part. A mistake. They can’t hang you for making a fool mistake, can they? Sure, they’ll raise hell, and you’ll raise hell, and there’ll be talk, but so what? He’ll be dead. Don’t worry, I can do it.”
“How?”
“First of all. I’ll put the units in, and we’ll let them go for a couple of days so he can wear the newness out of it, get used to it. He’ll be using it all the time, calling you, talking to you. It’s always that way when people first get them in their homes. Then it’ll die off. You can maybe work in a word to him, ask him to use it only if he has to. Like if he has an attack. He won’t mind, after he’s played with it for a while.”
“Will you please tell me how you’ll work it? It sounds complicated.”
“It’s perfect. Look, it’s going to be careless soldering. A condenser’s going to go bad and I’ll have to put a new one in.”
“What’s a condenser?”
“Never mind. The point is this. It’s a coupling condenser, and it’ll be soldered to the grid terminal of a tube socket. Now, when I solder it in I’m going to do a sloppy job. I’ll know it’s a sloppy job, but I’m in a hurry—I’ve got another call. So I try the intercom and it works. So I say to hell with it.”
“If it works, what good is the idea?”
“Here’s the idea. When the unit’s turned on for any length of time, the metal on the grid will expand from the heat. It’ll ground out. That means the unit won’t function. It’s that simple.�
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“But if he calls me, he isn’t just going to sit there and wait for metal to expand.”
“Shirley. It will only take a minute. And you’re forgetting this is staged for them when they look around. They’ll find him dead. You’ll make absolutely sure he’s dead before you do a thing. Like, if he uses the intercom to call you when he has an attack, and it works, you’ll just have to hold off going in to him till he dies. The unit will go off. It could go off the minute he turns the thing on.”
“Suppose it doesn’t go off?”
“But it will, Shirley.”
“Suppose he just uses it to call me. Maybe he just wants me to bring him something. I mean, before he has an attack, and it goes off? What then?”
“I thought of that, too. You just stick within hearing distance, like you do now, until the time comes when you know he’s having an attack. He’ll never know whether the unit’s working or not. See? There’s nothing can go wrong. Just the same, I’ll go over every point a hundred times, before we pull it.”
“I’m beginning to see. It’s good, Jack—it’s good.”
“Sure. So they find him dead. The intercom’s turned on. Obviously he was trying to call you. Only you were out here, sitting by the Gulf, and you didn’t hear a thing. You’re all broken up. The unit’s inspected. They find what? They find I did a careless soldering job. The set grounded out. He was trying to get you, but the unit wasn’t working. It’s my fault. I’m to blame. But did I actually kill him? Nobody’ll ever go so far as to say I did. It’s a human error.”
“Isn’t that taking an awful chance?”
“Sure. But you think of a better way, and tell me about it. Don’t you see? I’ll be sick about it, I’ll feel like hell. But what can I do? Resurrect him?”
“Jack—it’s really good.”
“Sure.” I motioned with my head. “We’d better get inside. It’s getting dark, and I’d better take off. It’ll look better if I come around in the morning, work in the daytime. We can iron out any snarls then. You try to think of flaws, all night, and I’ll do the same. Try to think of anything that could go wrong.”
“All right.”
We moved around the side of the house. “I wish you could stay,” she said.
“I can’t. We’ve got to take it real easy.”
We walked up the ramp onto the front porch. The front screen door opened, and a woman stepped out on the porch. She was very thin, with long blonde hair, and she was wearing a pair of dungarees and a loose white blouse. She looked the nervous type, and loud.
“Shirley,” she said. Her voice was raspy, like the edge of a tin can against slate, “Where’ve you been, honey? I’ve looked all over hell for you.”
This was great.
“Mayda,” Shirley said. “What is it?”
The woman looked at me and made with the sideward glance, waggling penciled eyebrows.
“I’d like to borrow handsome, here. For just a few minutes,” she said. She was maybe thirty-two or three. “I thought you were inside, so I just crashed the gate. You know me.”
Shirley gave me a quick helpless look and tried to tell me something with her eyes that I couldn’t get.
“Mr. Ruxton,” Shirley said. “This is my next door neighbor, Mayda Lamphier.”
“Free, white and twenty-one,” the woman said. She waggled her eyebrows again. “What I mean is, my husband’s in Alaska. He won’t be back for six months. You can imagine how that is, can’t you?”
“What’s up?” Shirley said.
“He’s a TV fixer-upper, isn’t he?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Well, daddy,” she said to me. “My set’s acting up. I saw your truck over here.” She regarded Shirley with a smile. “I figured maybe I could borrow him for a few minutes. It’s probably nothing more than some adjustment.” She gave with the eyebrows again. “The set, of course, honey.”
“I’m just leaving,” I said. “Be glad to take a look.” I turned to Shirley. “See you in the morning, Miss Angela. I’ll try to get everything installed as quickly as possible.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ruxton.”
This was something Shirley hadn’t warned me about. It troubled her. I felt bad about it.
We went across to Mayda’s house and tinkered with the set.
“You were right,” I said to Mayda Lamphier. “It was just the horizontal hold out of kilter. You could’ve fixed it yourself.”
“But it’s so much nicer having you do it. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Glad to help.”
“How’s for one for the road?”
“One what?”
“Oh, come, darling. Give me time to get my breath.” She gushed some laughter, eyeing me, and meaning damned well everything she said. “A drink is what I meant.”
“Thanks just the same. I’ve got to get back.”
“I’m all alone in this house,” she said. “I’ve been married for ten years. This is the first time my husband’s ever been away. Think of that.”
I thought of that.
“Know what I mean?” she said.
“You sure must miss him.”
“I don’t miss him worth a hang.” she said. “You know what I mean.”
I looked over at her TV set, in the dimly lighted room. “If you’ll just leave that the way it is, it’ll probably stay okay for a long while.”
“You won’t hang around?”
“I’m sorry. The business keeps me hopping.”
“How you like Shirl?”
“Miss Angela, you mean?”
“You know who I mean, honey.”
“She seems like a nice kid,” I said. I turned and started over toward the door.
“She’s sure tied down with that old monkey,” Mayda Lamphier said. “Know what I mean?”
I opened the front door, turned and looked at her.
She waggled her eyebrows, smiling. “You’re real cute,” she said. “Maybe Shirl won’t have to go running off so much, with you around.”
I hung onto the door. “I don’t get you,” I said quizzically.
“Come, now, darling. She’s always running downtown, running off. Stuck with that old geezer, and as young as she is. I don’t blame her. She’s missing out on all the fun, and she knows it. At her age, she should be having boyfriends—but she doesn’t have a one. I mean, not that you can see. I don’t blame her, whatever she does. Not really.”
Not much, she didn’t. This one was a knife with a sharp blade. Just the same, it was good, having met her. I figured I had acted right with her.
“Well,” I said. “That’s how it goes.”
“You’ll be around—over at Shirl’s?”
“Some work I have to do. It might take a couple of days.”
“I might need you again.”
“Okay. So long.”
I walked out into the street and around the hedge, and back to where I had left the truck parked in the driveway. Shirley was in the shadow of the porch, standing in the driveway.
“Make it look right,” I said, as I came up to the truck. “She’s got a nose forty feet long, and eyes like telescopes. She’s got to be stopped from going in your house. I don’t care how you do it. But do it. Tell her the doctor said nobody’s to come in, because of Victor. Got that?”
“All right, Mr. Ruxton,” she said, just loud enough so it would carry across the hedge. Then she got a little closer to me and spoke softly. “I was going to tell you about her. She’s perfectly harmless. She just thinks she’s full of hell.”
“Thinks or is,” I said. “Stop her. Coral snakes are harmless, too—if you stay away from them. It’s okay for now, because she really believes everything’s on the up and up. We’ve got to keep it that way. Get back inside, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh, God, Jack—if you could only stay.” I started the truck up and backed out into the street. Mayda Lamphier was walking back and forth in her living room. I saw her through the windows.
Six
I didn’t sleep worth a damn that night. I smoked cigarettes and lay there staring up at the ceiling, thinking about everything. I went over every detail, and I didn’t see how it could miss.
I got so excited my heart acted as if it had started freewheeling. It wouldn’t slow down. My breathing was all cockeyed, and I couldn’t lie still in the bed. I tried lying every way possible. Nothing worked. I held my breath, trying to slow down my heart and it would slow down, but the second I started breathing again it began hammering. Through it all I kept trying not to think of her, because she stirred me up so bad, just thinking of her, I knew I’d never sleep. I’d be lying there talking to her in my mind, laughing a little to myself, and once I caught myself motioning with my hands, explaining to her how everything would run smooth, and how we’d have the money, and then I’d be kissing her, with my hands snarled in her hair, and we’d be wild. So I’d get up.
I tried fixing a stiff drink. It only made things worse. So I quit trying to sleep. I took a scratch pad, and pencil, and got in bed, and lay there figuring loopholes. I made lists of everything I could think of. I put her down in black and white. Shirley Angela. I tried to coldly analyze all the movements she would make from the time Victor had The Attack until after the will was probated, and we had the money, and then the waiting after that. I’d find myself lying back staring into a misty pastel Rio de Janeiro, with her laughing and pushing against me with her hip, or maybe the two of us lying in a ritzy hotel bedroom on one of those oversized beds. And she would be naked, with that auburn hair fanned out around her head on the pillow.
So then I began all over again, with the intercom units. I would solder the coupling condenser to the grid terminal, and do a sloppy job.
I thought about how I would act, how sorry I would be when they told me it was my fault he died. So I got off that tack, right away, and began thinking about the big beds with her again, and somewhere along in there I konked off and Shirley Angela turned into Mayda Lamphier. I kept chasing Mayda Lamphier through an endless living room full of TV sets. She would stand on a TV set, and take off pieces of clothing, until she was leaping from one TV set to the other with nothing on but a raggedy blouse, flapping out behind her. I caught her. Just as I got my hands on her, she gave a yell, and this Doctor Miraglia popped up from behind all the TV sets. I came awake in a sweat.