The Expendable Man

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  “Those corn cakes are cold. And the bacon.”

  “You just brought them in, Mama.” His father began to serve a plate.

  “I’m not hungry,” Hugh said quickly. “All I want is a cup of coffee.” But he found himself eating; it was easier than arguing. “Where is everybody?”

  His father said, “If by everybody you mean the girls, they’ve gone swimming.”

  “I thought you planned to go with them,” his mother said.

  “I planned a full day,” Hugh told her. “I overslept.” The Sunday papers must be in the front room. He should have thought about them when he first came into the house, before joining the family. Just for a quick look at the headlines. There could be nothing about him in them, not even implied, or his parents would be asking questions.

  He heard his mother with his outer ear. “You needn’t have sent the car back last night, Hugh. There are enough cars at Stacy’s to take care of us.”

  This then had been Ellen’s story. “It’s your car.”

  “Maybe you thought you’d better not drive after the party,” his father suggested.

  “May be.” His grin felt unforced. Ellen might have included such a suggestion. “Those magnums came around pretty often.”

  They were talking about the dinner and about this afternoon’s reception and he tried to listen in case he should be called on for response. They didn’t seem to notice his silence; as an excuse for it he kept eating. If he could get away from the table before they did, he could take a moment for the newspaper. The day’s plans seemed to involve him; the girls would decorate the house but men were needed for the heavy work.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he heard his father saying. “You can give me a lift to Stacy’s and bring the girls back here with you.”

  What he saw was his father taking the Sunday paper from the near chair. It had been invisible under the drape of the white tablecloth. Automatically his hand twitched out for it, even as he watched his father hand the folded sections to his mother. “I’m too old for heavy work,” his father was continuing heartily. “Besides, after that champagne supper last night, I need a snooze. And once you clear the place of those babbling females, that’s what I’m going to have.”

  Hugh could have asked her: May I have a quick look at the front section? But what answer could he give to her inevitable: Why, is there some particular story . . .? And she would glance at the front page in passing, would see the headlines about the dead girl. Fear would squeeze her, the fear lying ever-dormant beneath the civilized front, beneath the normal life of a Los Angeles housewife whose husband’s income was in near-five figures, whose children had been born and bred and coddled in serenity and security and status.

  He did not ask. He rose from the table, made the proper good-bye sounds, and in a flurry of his mother’s memoranda for Stacy, followed his father out to the car. He should have emerged with a reassurance granted by the untroubled respite of the dining table. But anxiety smote him as sharply as the sun glare when once he was in the open. He was not able to dismiss it until he was certain that there were no strangers loitering on the street, no unfamiliar cars standing at the curb.

  “You drive,” his father said. “I don’t know whether it’s the champagne or the weather, but I’m beat.”

  As Hugh took the wheel, the anxiety recurred. This was no longer his mother’s white Cadillac, this was an item in police reports. He wondered how many eyes would be watching for it as it wheeled in and around the Phoenix streets.

  It was important that he make a special effort to match his father’s holiday mood. If anyone would sense something wrong in him, it would be Dad. “Anyone with no more sense than to play eighteen holes under an Arizona sun deserves what he feels,” he said.

  The radio had not come on at the turn of the ignition switch. Ellen must have turned it off manually last night. To protect him, just in case. He didn’t turn it on. He couldn’t risk it.

  The inevitable question was being asked. “When do you have to be back at the hospital?”

  “I can take a few days.” He had to take at least one more day. If everything worked out right tomorrow, as it surely would, he could fly back in time for duty on Tuesday.

  “I was hoping you might have a week, so you could drive Mother home. She’s going to stay on with Stacy and help her get rested up. The girls and I are flying out tonight.”

  How could it be possible to be comforted and fearful at one time? He echoed, “Tonight?”

  “I must be in the office in the morning. Your sisters are bellowing to stay longer, but they’ve missed enough school this week.”

  Hugh said, “I wish I could stay.” And he wished from the bottom of his heart that he could talk to his father about what had happened. But it wouldn’t be fair. His father didn’t get away often enough from his growing insurance business. Why should he have the vacation spoiled by Hugh’s problems? Hugh was a man, not a child. Yet if it hadn’t been that they were already in sight of Stacy’s, he might not have been able to keep quiet. He’d always confided in his father, from the time he could talk. The dangerous moment passed. He parked in front of the house, and together, he and his father went up the walk.

  Approaching the handsome suburban dwelling, for the first time Hugh’s anxieties were truly allayed. The Densmores and the Willises weren’t the kind of people you pushed around. The flurry of careless voices within the house increased his sense of security.

  He called out, “All passengers for the fifty-cent tour to Phoenix, line up at the door. At once. This means now.”

  He was answered by protests and pleas from the bedroom corridor. The girls were obviously engaged in the multitudinous pre-preparations that were a part of partytime. In the midst of the clamor, Stacy sat on the living-room couch, turning the hem of her dress. “The girls said it was too long,” she supplied.

  Hugh didn’t, couldn’t, sit down to wait. He put out his cigarette in an ash tray and automatically lighted another. He was nervous about facing Ellen. He would have to give her an explanation for last night, and the only explanation there could be was the facts of the whole sordid mess. It wasn’t something he wanted to tell her. Of all the many girls he’d known and liked and perhaps loved, she was one who might have developed into the real thing. If he hadn’t met up with Iris Croom.

  When Ellen emerged from the bedroom corridor, he knew he hadn’t been wrong in trusting her to handle things the night before. Her competence was implicit in the reassuring way her eyes met his in the moment before she put on her dark sun glasses. There might have been a flicker of relief that he was here, not held by the police. He attempted to move toward her, trying to make it unobtrusive, but his way was blocked by what seemed a roomful of sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews. She too made the attempt. But always before they could converge, the others, as in a ballet, had moved to thrust them apart again. He gave up and raised his voice, “Come on everybody who’s going.”

  The rush through the door began. He watched Ellen approach. There was no chance to speak, for Clytie came pushing after her, calling back to Stacy, “But I have to go, Mother. I’ve always decorated the wedding arch. Besides, I’d go nuts sitting around here doing nothing until four o’clock.”

  When Hugh reached the car, the group was somehow mashed inside. With Ellen next to the driver’s seat. He wondered if she had arranged it or if it were his sisters’ matchmaking tendencies. He was sorry he would have to disappoint them. So sorry, but there was another girl . . . in another country, and the wench was dead.

  Through his bitterness, he heard Ellen’s voice, almost beneath her breath. “There’s nothing about you in the morning paper or on the radio.”

  He said, as quietly, “It was too late to call you last night.”

  “I read by the phone until three. Is it—all right?”

  He nodded. It wasn’t a lie. Everything was all right as far as he knew. He said, “I’ll tell you what it’s about when there’s a chance. Pe
rhaps after the reception we can get away for a while.”

  “It’s a date,” she confirmed gravely.

  Being able to postpone the recital somehow steadied his nerves. At the house, work, physical work, took over. He and the nephews put up the arch while the girls wrapped the white satin ribbon on the balusters and the handrail of the staircase. There was no time for brooding as they all raced against time to cover the whole with white oleanders and shining green leaves. His mother and Mrs. Bent were doing the dining room, the two grandmothers were stirring in the kitchen. It was near three o’clock before all the groups were satisfied. And he must return to the motel to dress.

  He drew Ellen aside, ignoring the wise looks that followed them. “Do you mind taking the crowd back to Stacy’s? I’m going to cut out.”

  “I’ll drive you over.”

  “No,” he said, too quickly, too sharply.

  She must have known that everything wasn’t right, but she said only, “All right. You won’t forget we have a date?”

  “I won’t forget,” he told her, wishing that he could forget it, or wishing that it was a date, no more than that. He waited for a moment until attention had been diverted from him, then unhurriedly slipped out to the porch and ran down the steps to the pavement. He struck out slantwise across the wide street, dodging the Sunday afternoon traffic. The heat was no longer ablaze; by now it was heavy, oppressive, as before a storm in the eastern part of the country. In Arizona it didn’t presage a storm, merely the late afternoon. He walked as quickly as possible, but it was as if he were walking through shifting sand.

  He could have accepted Ellen’s offer for a ride, but if Ringle and Venner were waiting for him, he didn’t want her exposed to their scrutiny. Last night they had given her no attention, they’d been too busy concentrating on him. Unless they saw her again, they wouldn’t remember her. They must not see her again. He couldn’t bear the thought of their ugliness touching her.

  He was on the side street which led to the motel when he first noticed the car. Noticed yet didn’t notice the first time it went by. It wasn’t until it passed a second time, more slowly, that he realized it was the same car which had been with him since he’d crossed Washington. By then it was out of sight. He found he could remember nothing, neither color nor shape nor make. Just an old sedan with a man at the wheel. It could have been a plainclothes police car; it wasn’t so different from the one he’d ridden in last night. But it hadn’t been Ringle or Venner driving, and there’d been only one man in it. The police usually worked in pairs. For the first time it came to him that there would be others besides the police interested in him. The unknown man Iris had come to meet. The man who refused his name to the police. The man because of whom the girl had met death. Three men or one.

  The thought slowed his steps and the taste of fear was again in his mouth. Somehow he knew, knew with dreadful clarity, that this man had full intent to make Hugh the killer. He had begun last night with the anonymous call. No, before that he had shown his intent. The first shape had been when he brought Iris to Hugh’s door on Friday night. It must have been he who brought her there.

  Hugh half ran to the door of his unit. But he hesitated before turning the key and slipping inside. No messages, no persons waited for him. Having no radio, he turned on the television set, not expecting news but just in case. There wasn’t any. He blanked out thought while he did what had to be done—another shower, a clean dress shirt, a cotton of lighter fluid to erase a spot of cigarette ashes from his white coat. When he was dressed in his wedding garments, he tried all the television channels but there was still no news. He said aloud, “No news is good news,” but he knew he was lying as he said it. If only there were some way, some safe way, to make inquiries of the police. There wasn’t. Not for him.

  It was time to return to the grandparents’ house, but he delayed. He was afraid, he admitted it, afraid to go outside. The fear was not now of the police but of a man without a face or name, a man who knew his face and name and where to find him.

  He looked long at the phone. He didn’t have to go back alone through the quiet, late afternoon side streets. He could call his sister’s house; any one of a dozen cars would stop by for him. He had a good excuse, the wish to arrive for the wedding without passing through six or eight blocks of steam heat. He wouldn’t let himself make the move toward the phone. He wouldn’t give in to irrational fear. He turned off the air conditioner; the night’s chill would have set in before he returned and he couldn’t know but what he’d later need a warm room as he had last night. He could delay no longer. He took a last look at the television screen; it was advertising some children’s remedy. He cut it off and was on his way.

  It didn’t seem so hot out now although the sun was still high above the horizon. In his white jacket, he was too visible. He wanted to cut and run but he made himself walk in normal fashion, paying no more attention to passing cars than he would have yesterday or the day before. If that one passed him again, he didn’t recognize it. There were so many old dark sedans.

  His spirits lifted when he reached the wide thoroughfare of Washington. Certainly nothing would happen here. It was a well-traveled street although there wasn’t much traffic on a Sunday afternoon. He followed it to the side street which led over to the Jefferson house. On Jefferson he no longer had to fear. He joined the wedding guests making their way toward the house. He would be anonymous to strangers in the protection of the group.

  Within the house, he took a place near the front door. He could step outside to meet them, if the detectives should come. Or if any uninvited guest intruded. But no strangers appeared.

  The wedding was quiet perfection. His grandfather pronounced the beautiful old words. The women wept and the men swallowed hard when Clytie’s luminous face was turned to meet John’s unaccountably solemn one. The bridesmaids were a frieze of summer-leaf chiffon; among them Hugh saw Ellen’s flower face only. He wondered how much she had figured out. There was only one big story in the papers and she was not a stupid girl.

  Because the wedding was in the home, the guest list was small—the family and a few old friends. But the reception which followed seemed to include the entire community. There was no segregation with Clytie’s university friends and John’s Air Force crowd on hand. In a way Hugh wished that Ringle and Venner could have been looking in. They might realize that poor shoddy little Iris couldn’t have been the outworn cliché of sexual interest to Hugh.

  During the reception, he couldn’t remain on guard. He had to mingle with family and friends. With his fingers crossed against intrusion, he had to pretend the joy the others were feeling. Grandmother’s towering white cake was cut, the toasts lifted. Hugh limited himself to one champagne cup. He would take no chance on a muddled head tonight.

  At six o’clock Clytie tossed the bride’s bouquet from high on the flowered staircase. Whatever arrangements John had made for their departure worked. The guests began to drift away. And at last he was free to go, to lift his dangerous shadow from the family’s happiness.

  If it had been possible, he would have gone alone, silently as shadow. But when he glanced across the room, Ellen’s questioning eyes were on him, waiting for his signal. He had committed himself when he asked her help last night; there was no way to eliminate her now. He had to fill in the background for her, despite his reluctance. It was as if he knew that once the story was told, nothing could be withdrawn. From that moment, there must be a relentless march to an inevitable end.

  He circled to her side. “Whenever you’re ready.” It was the first time he’d spoken to her since the beginning of the festivities.

  “I’m ready.”

  “We can skip the good-byes. We’ll be seeing the family at the airport later. I’m driving them.”

  She wasn’t a girl who fussed. She retrieved an embroidered purse from somewhere and they left unnoticed among other departing guests.

  In the car, he said, “We could go to my room at The Pal
ms but I’d rather not.”

  She understood. “Whatever you say.”

  The only place where they could talk without danger of interruption would be a country lane. If the white car wasn’t spotted—if he weren’t being sought even now on a police call. He drove away, checking the mirror for a following car but there didn’t seem to be any. At 24th Street he turned north as far as McDowell, then pointed east toward Scottsdale. The day’s heat had softened, enough so in this before-twilight period, that the opened windows of the moving car gave an illusion of evening’s cool. Raw green tract houses seemed to have taken over the countryside until they reached the cut. Here the troglodyte rocks and spire cactus were relics of what once had been.

  The southern acres of Papago Park were unspoiled, although across the road the government area was newly scarred with a shiny wire fence. Had it been after dark, Hugh would have turned in at one of the sandy bypaths of Papago. But to park on the mesa was to induce attention; passing motorists couldn’t fail to notice the big white car. He drove on to Scottsdale Road and turned north toward the village.

  Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him that Scottsdale might be dangerous. Iris had been found in Scottsdale, not Phoenix. It was here the police might be watching for him. Or the anonymous man who had known the Scottsdale area well enough to choose a secluded section of the canal road to get rid of Iris. Having come this far, Hugh went on. He couldn’t hope to hide, wherever he went. Phoenix and its environs hadn’t grown that much.

  He had remembered Scottsdale as surrounded by open country. He wasn’t prepared for the startling growth the village had suffered, the gash of highway and the intricate, busy traffic pattern where little more than three years ago had been the quiet four corners. He turned off at Main Street and went north again at Miller Road, hoping that way might lead to what once had been. He was discouraged as he passed row after row of paint-clean doll houses.

  “This was open fields the last time I was here,” he said ruefully, but as he went on he was all at once off the pavement and onto a country lane. He might have been miles from the village, there were fields and an old tree somnolent against the water of a tiny stream.