by Gil Brewer
He kept on moving his head from side to side.
“Noel, honey. We thought you were dead. I did the only thing I could do. I’ve been trying to get Nichols to help me, see? So I was going to pay him to help me get out of the country. He needs the money for his motel, here. Can’t you understand that?”
The gun began to droop a little and the head-shaking slowed down almost to a stop.
“So, then Radan came here this afternoon. He burst right in here, Noel. He saw the briefcase we had the money in— remember? I gave it to him. There was nothing else to do.”
A crafty look came into his eye. “Radan just took the money? Didn’t he do anything else?”
I said, “He threatened a lot of things. Maybe it’s all still up in the air. He hasn’t been back. That’s why I came over here now, to ask her what we should do.”
He wheeled on me with the gun, and it scared me. I made a pass at the gun with one hand. It connected. The gun clattered on the floor.
“Don’t!”
He came at me with that one arm, his head back, cursing. It was comical. Him with his arm in a sling and his head all bandaged up and that scared look in his one bloodshot eye. But he swung, just the same.
I tried to hold him off. Then I took a poke at him, shying away from his face. I hit him in the chest. He staggered back toward the door and the door opened and Bess stood there, blinking sleepily and hitching at her housecoat over her pajamas.
“I heard a noise,” she said.
He fell against her. She shoved him off and looked at us. He turned and saw her and his face reddened.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing, Bess. It’s all a mistake.”
Teece eyed me and swallowed and looked at Bess. There was the gun on the floor, but Bess hadn’t seen it.
Vivian saw the gun and she stepped over and stood just beyond it, so Bess wouldn’t be able to see it even if she looked down there.
“But, Roy—” Bess said.
“Yes,” Vivian said.
“Sure. Look, this man—” she motioned toward Teece— “is a friend of mine. Mr. Nichols must have heard something and made a mistake.”
“That’s right, Bess. I couldn’t sleep after I woke up. I went out to get some air and I saw this guy snooping. I though he was a prowler. Actually, I guess that all he was doing was looking for Miss Latimer’s apartment. I’m sorry I was so bull-headed.”
Teece’s eyebrow shot up.
“He’d planned on coming down,” Vivian said. “He was supposed to meet me here. He met with an accident on the way. Maybe you’ve noticed how worried I’ve been? Well, this is why. Mr. Nichols thought he was doing the right thing. He came to help me.”
Bess stood there and took it all in. Then she turned and stepped out onto the porch. “I’m sorry,” she said through the screen door. “You coming, Roy?”
“Sure. Just a minute.”
She went away and we looked at each other.
“The money,” Teece said.
“We told you. Radan’s got it.”
Teece went over and picked up the gun and looked at it.
He put it away. “Radan, huh?” he said, and there was this funny new look in that eye of his. He stared at Vivian for a long moment and she looked right back at him, nodding slightly. Then he turned away and went outside. He disappeared along the side of the apartment, back toward the garages. I started for the door.
“Don’t leave me alone!”
I opened the door and stepped out on the porch. She came up to the door and stepped out on the porch. She came up to the door and stood there, scratching her fingernails on the screen.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “I can’t leave now. I can’t leave!”
I went down off the porch and around toward the garage. I heard a car start up out in the alley. It drove away fast, showering gravel. I listened to it until I couldn’t hear it anymore, then I went back to our place…
“Roy, I’d like you to ask Miss Latimer to leave. I’d appreciate it if you’d go over there now and ask her to pack up her things.”
“Bess, don’t be silly. I know how it looked. It bothered me, too. But everything’s all right now.”
“I’m sorry. But I’m asking you to do this for me. I don’t like it, the way things are over there. Are you going to do it for me?”
“Look. Let her stay till morning.” I reached out and drew her close and kissed her, but she was kind of cold about it. “Morning?”
“All right. In the morning, you go over there the first thing, Roy.”
Chapter 11
In the morning I figured she forgot about what she’d said. Either that, or maybe thought better of it. I didn’t get much sleep. I lay there thinking it through, but trying to stay away from the real part—how it was working out. I kept trying to figure how I could have got my hands on some of that money, or all of it, without this mess. There was no use telling myself I didn’t want that money. There were too many reasons why I needed it.
The big thing I kept figuring was that it was crooked money to begin with. Somehow that made me feel better. I kept coming back to that, trying to figure some way. And then I remembered that was how Vivian had talked in the hotel room. It wasn’t money that really belonged to anybody, she’d said. Or to that effect. And she was right.
But there was no way. Not unless I went over there and took it and got out of here. I thought about that. How I could grab the money and run. Then I could mail Bess enough to pay off the motel, and… only it wasn’t any good. It didn’t have that part I wanted—the peace of mind part.
Because without the peace, you had nothing. And you couldn’t buy that, either.
Anyway, all I wanted out of this world was Bess and the motel. The motel. That was a laugh, and I lay there with Bess asleep beside me, thinking of her, and how I could make some decent kind of life for us together…
I figured I’d done enough to belong to a part of that briefcase, anyway. Not a big part. Just enough to take care of immediacies. Where did that come from?
And then I saw that Radan’s face, like it was hanging up there on the ceiling of my mind. And I knew what kind of a guy he was. I didn’t want to mix with him.
It was all real crazy. Albert and the Lincoln and Vivian and Noel Teece, and now Radan, like a parade through the bloody twilight. And the briefcase with that red scarf tied around it. Only she’d dropped the scarf. Talisman.
“Go to sleep, Roy.”
“Yeah.”
What in hell was I going to do? The emptiness got filled with a kind of frantic rushing and my head got to going good, too. I wanted to yell and crack my knuckles, or sock somebody.
Because it was all closing in. I could tell.
You recognize the landmarks, because you’ve seen them before, if you’ve been around enough. You go along trying to hold it all gutted up and hard and ignoring it all, then one fine day it busts wide open. And there you are. You got to do something, and there’s nothing to do. You can’t think even.
Southern Comfort Motel—crawling with fright.
That Vivian was a dilly, sure enough. Getting herself messed up like she had. Shooting the works to Teece, and so scared now with what she’d done, she could hardly stand up.
It was like I didn’t quite know them and I didn’t want to. Just that briefcase. A piece of that…
So I finished breakfast and she didn’t say a word about anything. My second coffee, I said, “Maybe mow the lawn today.”
She clinked the plates and coffee cups to the sink. She ran the water. She shut it off. She had on a kind of blue-flowered housecoat and she looked nice, only worried.
“Roy?”
“Yeah?” Here it was.
“Have you forgotten what I said last night?”
I kind of ran my hand across my face, trying to remember what she meant, letting her think that was it.
“You know what I mean. About Miss Latimer. I want you to go over there and ask he
r to leave.”
“I figured that was just a pipe dream.”
“It’s no dream. You want me to do it? If you won’t, I will.”
She sure had me there. Now what was I going to do? Tell Vivian that, and she’d freeze over there in number six, and you couldn’t get her out with a derrick.
“Well?”
“You’d have to give her back her rent money.”
“A pleasure.”
She left the kitchen. “We can’t have people like her running around, Roy. She’ll hurt the name of the place. Imagine, that wreck of a man coming in the middle of the night. Maybe she picked him off the street, how do you know?”
I tagged along and she went into the office, to the desk, and counted the money out of the cigar box, and looked over at me.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d do it, Roy.”
I took the money. “Can’t we give her a little more time?”
“You want her staying here? That it? With her nice tight shorts and everything?”
I looked at her.
“I’m sorry I said that, Roy. Honest. I didn’t mean it.” She stared down at the desk, then up at me again. “It’s just she worried me, being here. She isn’t right, and you know it.”
“Okay.” I left the office and let the screen door slam. I came along by number six and looked it over. It was quiet.
What was I going to do? I had to tell her what Bess said, but there was no saying how she’d take it. I knew how she’d take it. It had to be Bess’s way.
Well, she sure had that red scarf tied around her neck.
Vivian was right there on the floor in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom hall. She was all crumpled up in a twisted knot, the blue skirt up to her belly, and her face was a hell of a color. Her eyes bugged and her mouth was open, her tongue all swelled up like a fat pork chop.
I turned around, wanting to run, then stopped. The scarf was tied around her neck so tight the flesh bulged around it. I got over there, still holding her refund money in my hand, and I touched her.
She was cold.
Chapter 12
Well, Vivian was gone, all right. Only it wasn’t exactly the way Bess had wanted her to go.
I knelt there for a long time, dizzy and half sick. Her shirt was torn at one shoulder and there were bruises on her arms. She was crumpled on the floor like paper gets crumpled.
That red scarf. Vivian’s good luck. Her talisman.
Then I remembered the briefcase. I got out of there, still carrying the rent refund wadded up in my hand. I shoved it into my pocket and cut over next door. I kept thinking. What now—What now—? I went next door, let myself in and headed for the bathroom.
I got the lid off the tank and there was the briefcase. All I could think was, maybe she told whoever did this where the money was. I got it out of there, and the money was inside. I put the lid back on the tank, turned the water on and headed for the rear of the apartment.
I had to hide it again. But where?
I got out in the garage and stood there, wondering what to do with the briefcase. So finally I climbed up on the hood of the Chevy and grabbed a beam and snaked myself up there where I had some lumber piled. I crawled back into the corner under the eave and shoved the briefcase under some of the boards. You wouldn’t find it unless you knew it was there. They’d tear the whole motel apart first.
They? They—who? And it kept hitting me that the law would be in on this now. There wasn’t anything I could do about that. I climbed down onto the car again and hit the dirt. There was no sign of anybody. I made a run for it, down between the garages and to the back door of number six. It was open. I walked through the kitchen, and she was still lying there on the floor.
“Roy?”
It was Bess. She called again from out front. I stepped past the body and walked through the living room fast, and out the door. I stood on the porch.
Bess came across the lawn. She’d been talking with Mrs. Donne who was settled in her beach chair, a half-filled drink in her hand.
“Well, did you tell her?” I didn’t say anything. “All right. I’ll tell her!” She tried to push past me. I got hold of her and held her still. She had on a white dress and she looked fresh and lovely, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so worried. Her eyes had that kind of not-quite-looking-at-you way they get.
“Don’t go in there, Bess. Bess—” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“I certainly am going in there! I’m going to tell her. Didn’t you say anything to her at all? What’d you do, just stand there?”
She pulled away from me and started for the door and number six. I turned and went after her. “Is he still inside?”
“No.”
“Then, what—?” She knocked lightly on the door, brushing some hair away from her forehead.
“Nobody’s going to answer,” I said softly.
Bess opened the door and went on inside. I followed her, thinking, What am I going to do? Bess just stood there staring, and I could see her start to yell. If she yelled, that was her business. She didn’t. She cut it off and turned and looked at me and blinked. “She’s dead.”
“Yes.”
Well, she just stood there, staring. She didn’t cry or scream or carry on at all, like a woman might. And I was proud of her—that she was my Bess. Then she looked at me again and swallowed.
“Well,” I said. “That’s the way I found her.”
She shook her head and went over and slumped into a chair. I got over there and pulled her up and held her. She was trembling a little. I held her tight.
“What d’you suppose happened, Roy?”
“That’s better.”
I wondered for a moment if she’d thought I’d done this. Sometimes they can cook up some weird things in their heads. She looked over there again and whipped her head away.
“It’s awful!” She didn’t even begin to know how awful. It was just hitting her, what had really happened. You could see it come across her face. A shadow of fear, and something like hate.
“Mrs. Nichols?”
I whirled and it was the young girl who was on her honeymoon, in number eleven. We hadn’t seen anything of them, but now here she was. Her yellow dress was one of these fluffy things, and she had brown hair and brown eyes and she smiled and said, “Mrs. Nichols.”
“No,” I said. “Wait.”
But she was already coming through the door. Bess started toward her with one hand out.
The girl said, “I was just looking for you. I saw you come in here, so I—” and she stopped. She saw that over there on the floor and she screamed.
She put both hands against her face and filled her lungs and let it rip. It rocked the house. She really had lungs. Her face got red and she kept on screaming. She turned and ran smack into the screen door, and got it open and went outside, screaming and running for number eleven.
I looked out the window. Mrs. Donne was standing out there by the beach chair. She held the glass in her hand, but it had all spilled down her front. She watched the girl run across the lawn, trying to brush the spilled drink off her dress. Then she looked over here at number six.
“We’ve got to phone the police.”
“Wait.”
“What d’you mean, wait, Roy? We can’t wait.”
“Wait, anyway.” I went and sat in the chair and held my head. I felt blocked. I knew there was something I could do. There had to be—
“We’ve got to phone the police right now. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t?”
“Wait.” I didn’t want her to call the cops. I couldn’t help it, I just didn’t want it, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Roy, let’s get out of here. I don’t want to stay in this place.”
“Yeah.”
She came over and grabbed my arm. I stood up and we walked over to the door. “What’s the matter with you, Roy?”
“All right.”
The girl from numb
er eleven was standing down there by her porch. She was talking with her husband through the window, waving her arms around. I quit looking at her, but I could hear her damned piping voice talking and talking.
We got over to the office and Bess sat down at the desk. “What’ll I say?”
I stood there watching her.
“Roy!”
“Just go ahead. Call them.” So she did…
“How long d’you think it’ll take them to get here, Roy?”
I sat there on the couch, staring at the floor. I could see Bess’ feet going back and forth on the rug, back and forth. She walked up and down.
“Roy. You just sit there.”
I stared.
“Did—did you touch her?”
“Yeah. She’s cold.”
“What could have happened? It must have been that man, the one with his arm in the sling. This is awful, Roy! It can ruin business here, too.”
Business. Business.
“Here come the honeymooners.”
I looked up and they came along and knocked on the office door. Bess went over and started to open the door, then decided against it.
“We’re leaving,” the guy said. He was a tall, thin guy, dressed in a gray suit. He had red hair and freckles, and the girl stuck close to him. “We were going to stay another week, but now we want this week’s rent back. We’ve decided to move along. That’s how—”
“All right,” Bess said. There was a kind of sting to the way she said it. “Come on in.”
“No,” the girl said.
They stood there, shuffling on the doorstep. Bess looked at them for a moment, then went and counted some money out of the cigar box and looked at me and went over and opened the door. She handed the guy the money.
They turned quickly and walked away without a word. The girl was talking like crazy the minute they were on the front yard. I sure didn’t envy his married life with that one. A few more years and she’d really be a dilly.