The Fiend

by Margaret Millar

  “What’s—the matter, Charlie?”

  “Oh God, Ben. Something terrible. She tried to kill me. A woman, a woman in a little blue car. I swear to God, Ben, she meant to kill me and I don’t even know her, I never saw her before.”

  “Sshhh.” Ben looked quickly up and down the alley. “Keep your voice down. Someone might hear you.”

  “But it’s true! I didn’t imagine it. I don’t imagine things like that, ever. Other things, maybe, but not—”

  “Calm down and tell me about it, quietly.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will, Ben. Anything you say.”

  “Take a deep breath.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now where did this happen?”

  Charlie leaned against the wooden rubbish bin. His whole body was shaking and the more he tried to control it, the more violently it shook, as though the lines of communication between his brain and his muscles had been cut. “I d-don’t remember the name of the street but it was over on the north side. I’d gone to Pinewood Park to eat my lunch.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Charlie repeated. “Well, for the fresh air. Sun and fresh air, they’re nice, they’re good for you. Didn’t you tell me that, Ben?”

  “Yes. Yes. Now go on.”

  “I was driving back to work and this little blue car was in front of me, with a lady at the wheel. She was going real slow like maybe she was drunk and trying to be extra careful to avoid an accident. Well, I passed her. That’s all I did, Ben, I just passed her.”

  “You didn’t honk your horn?”

  “No.”

  “Or look at her in a way that she might have—well, mis­interpreted?”

  “No. I swear to you, Ben, I just passed her. Then I heard this terrible sound of gears and I looked around and she was after me. I stepped on the gas to get away from her.”

  “Why?”

  “What else could I have done? What would you have done?”

  “Pulled over to the curb, or into a gas station, and asked the lady what the hell she thought she was doing.”

  “I never thought of that,” Charlie said earnestly. “When someone chases me, I run.”

  “Yes, I guess you do.” Ben wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Only a few minutes ago the sun had been like a warm, kindly friend. Now it was his enemy. It stabbed his eyes and temples and burned the top of his head where his hair was thinning, and the dry tender skin around his mouth. It imprisoned him in the alley with the smell of cooking food and the smell of Charlie’s fear.

  He lit another cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nostrils to deaden them. It was when he threw away the spent match that he noticed the little plant growing out of a crack in the concrete a yard or so from where Charlie was standing. It was about six inches high. It was covered with city dust and some of its leaves had been squashed by the wheel of a car, but it was still growing, still alive. He was filled with a sense of wonder. The little plant had nothing going for it at all: seeded by accident out of garbage, driven over, walked on, unwatered, with no rain since March, it was still alive.

  He said, “Everything’s going to be O.K., Charlie. Don’t worry about it. Things work out one way or another.”

  “But what do I do now, Ben?”

  “Get back on the job or you’ll be late.”

  “I can’t use my own car.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Nothing,” Charlie said. “The engine’s running fine, only—well, here’s how I figure it, Ben. That woman, she couldn’t have anything against me when I don’t even know her. So it must be the car. She has a grudge against the former owner and she thought he was driving, not me. So it seems obvious what I’ve got to do now.”

  “To you, perhaps. Not to me.”

  “Don’t you see, Ben? Everything will be solved if I buy a new car. Oh, not a brand-new one but a different one so that woman won’t chase me again.”

  If there was a woman, Ben thought, and if there was a chase. Maybe he invented the whole thing as an excuse to change cars again. “You can’t afford to buy a car now,” he said bluntly, “with the wedding coming up so soon.”

  Charlie looked surprised as if he’d forgotten all about the wed­ding. “I have money in the bank.”

  “You’ll be needing it to buy Louise’s ring, pay for the honey­moon, buy yourself some new clothes—”

  “I’m old enough to make my own decisions,” Charlie said, kicking the side of the rubbish bin. “I’m an engaged man. An engaged man has to plan things for himself.”

  Ben looked down at the little tomato plant growing out of the crack in the concrete. “Yes. Yes, I suppose he does.”

  “Thank you, Ben. I really do thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For everything. Even just for being around.”

  “You’re an engaged man now, Charlie. I’m not going to be around much longer. You and Louise will be making a life of your own.”

  One of the Mexican busboys came out into the alley and said something to Ben in Spanish. The boy spoke softly, smiled softly, moved softly. Ben gave him fifty cents and the boy went back inside.

  Charlie had paid no attention to the interruption. His eyes were fixed on Ben’s face and his thin silky brows were stitched together in a frown. “You talk as if everything’s going to change between us. But it’s not. You’ll be living with Louise and me, we’ll be eating our meals together and playing cards in the eve­ning the way we used to. Why should we let things change?”

  “Things change whether we let them or not. And that’s good—it keeps us from getting bored with life and with each other.”

  “But I’m not bored.”

  “Listen to me, Charlie. I won’t be living with you and Louise, first because I don’t want to, and second, because Louise wouldn’t want me to, and third be—”

  “Louise wouldn’t mind. She’s crazy about you, Ben. Why, I bet when you come right down to it, she’d just as soon marry you as marry me.”

  Ben reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Goddam it, don’t you talk like that. It’s not fair to Louise. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said in a whisper. “But I was only—”

  “Sure, you were only. You’re always only. You know what happens when you’re only? Things get so fouled up—”

  “I’m sorry, Ben.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Well.”

  “I only meant it as a compliment, to show you how much Louise likes you and that she wouldn’t mind at all if you lived with us.”

  Ben took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I have to go back inside.”

  “You’re not really mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “And it’s O.K. if I buy another car, say right after work?”

  “It’s your money.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to come along and give me advice on what make and model to get and things like that?”

  “Not this time.”

  Charlie heard the finality in his voice and he knew Ben meant not this time and not any time ever again.

  He watched Ben go back into the cafeteria kitchen and he felt like a child abandoned in the middle of a city, in a strange noisy alley filled with the clatter of dishes and the clanking of pots and pans, and voices shouting, in Spanish, words he couldn’t understand.

  I’m frightened. Help me, Ben!

  Not this time. Not any time ever again.

  The two Charlies walked, together but not quite in step, down the alley and into the street, the engaged man about to buy a new car, and the little boy looking for a little girl to play with.

  (10)

  Miss Albert first noticed the child because she was so neat and quiet. Most of the children who c
ame to the library during summer vacation wore jeans or shorts with cotton T-shirts, as if they were using the place as a rest stop between beach and ball game, movie and music lesson. In groups or alone, they were always noisy and always chewing something—chocolate bars, bubble gum, peanut brittle, apples, ice cream cones, bananas, occasionally even cotton candy. Miss Albert had a recurrent nightmare in which she opened up one of the valuable art books and found all the pages glued together with cotton candy.

  The little girl with the blond ponytail was not chewing any­thing. She wore a pink dress with large blue daisies embroidered on the patch pockets. Her shoes had the sick-white color that indicated too many applications of polish to cover too many cracks in the leather. The child’s expression was blank, as if her hair was drawn back and fastened so tightly that her facial muscles couldn’t function. It must be just like having your hair pulled all the time, Miss Albert thought. I wouldn’t like it one bit. She probably doesn’t either, poor child.

  The girl picked a magazine from the rack and sat down. She opened it, turned a few pages, then closed it again and sat with it on her lap, her eyes moving from the main door to the clock on the mezzanine and back again. The obvious conclusion was that the girl was waiting for someone. But Miss Albert didn’t care for the obvious; she preferred the elaborate, even the bizarre. The child’s family had just arrived in town, possibly to get away from a scandal of some kind—what kind Miss Albert would decide on her lunch hour—and the girl, alone and friendless, had come to the library for the children’s story hour at half past one. But Miss Albert was not satisfied with this ex­planation. The girl had no look of anticipation on her face, no look of anything, thanks to that silly hair-do. She’d be cute as a bug with her hair cut just below her ears and a fluffy bang. Or maybe with an Alice-in-Wonderland style like Louise, except on Louise it looks ridiculous at her age. Imagine Louise getting married, I think it’s just wonderful. It shows practically any­thing can happen if you wait long enough.

  Half an hour passed. Miss Albert’s stomach was rumbling and her arms were tired from taking books from her metal cart and putting them back on their proper shelves. From the chil­dren’s section adjoining the main reading room, she could hear a rising babble of voices and the scrape of chairs being re­arranged. In ten minutes the story hour would begin and Mrs. Gambetti, with nothing to do at children’s checkout, would come and relieve Miss Albert for lunch. And Miss Albert would take her sandwich and thermos of coffee over to Encinas Park to watch the people with their sandwiches and their Thermoses of coffee.

  But I really can’t leave the child just sitting there, she thought. Very likely she doesn’t know where to go and she’s probably too timid to ask, having been through all that scandal whatever it was but I’m sure it was quite nasty.

  Miss Albert pushed her empty cart vigorously down the aisle like a determined week-end shopper. At the sound of its squeak­ing wheels, Mary Martha turned her head and met Miss Albert’s kindly and curious gaze.

  Miss Albert said, “Hello.”

  Mary Martha had been instructed not to speak to strangers but she didn’t think this would apply to strangers in a library, so she said, “Hello,” back.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mary Martha Oakley.”

  “That’s very pretty. You’re new around here, aren’t you, Mary?”

  The child didn’t answer, she just looked down at her shoes. Her toes had begun to wiggle nervously like captive fish. She didn’t want the lady to notice so she attempted to hide her feet under the chair. During the maneuver, the magazine slid off her lap onto the floor.

  Miss Albert picked it up, trying not to look surprised that a child so young would choose Fortune as reading material. “Did you move to town recently, Mary?”

  “I’m not supposed to answer when people call me Mary be­cause my name is Mary Martha. But I guess it’s all right in a library. We didn’t move to town, we’ve always lived here.”

  “Oh. I thought—well, it doesn’t matter. The story hour is beginning in a minute or two. You just go through that door over there”—Miss Albert pointed—”and turn to the right and take a seat. Any seat you like.”

  “I already have a seat.”

  “But you can’t hear the story from this distance.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You don’t want to hear the story?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m waiting for my mother.”

  Miss Albert concealed her disappointment behind a smile. “Well, perhaps you’d like something to read that would be a little more suitable for your age bracket.”

  Mary Martha hesitated, frowning. “Do you have books about everything?”

  “Pretty nearly everything, from aardvarks to Zulus. What kind of book are you interested in?”

  “One about divorce.”

  “Divorce?” Miss Albert said with a nervous little laugh. “Goodness, I’m not sure I— Wouldn’t you like a nice picture book to look at instead?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t—that is, perhaps we’d better ask Miss Lang in the reference department. She knows more about such situations than I do. Come on, I’ll take you over and introduce you.”

  Behind the reference desk Louise was acting very busy but Miss Albert wasn’t fooled. Checking the number of sheep in Australia or the name of the capital of Ghana hadn’t put the color in her cheeks and the dreamy, slightly out-of-focus look in her eyes.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Miss Albert said, knowing very well she was, but feeling that it was the kind of thing that should be interrupted, especially during working hours. “This is Mary Martha Oakley, Louise. Mary Martha, this is Miss Lang.”

  Louise stared at the girl and said, “Oh,” in a cold way that puzzled Miss Albert because Louise was usually very good with children.

  “Mary Martha,” Miss Albert added, “wants a book on divorce.”

  “Does she, indeed,” Louise said. “Am I to gather, Miss Albert, that you’ve encouraged the child in her request by bring­ing her over here?”

  “Not exactly. My gosh, Louise, I thought you’d get a kick out of it, a laugh.”

  “You know the rules of the library as well as I do, or you should. You’re excused now, Miss Albert.”

  “Good,” Miss Albert said crisply. “It happens to be my lunch hour.”

  Over Mary Martha’s head she gave Louise a dirty look, but Louise wasn’t even watching. Her eyes were still fixed on Mary Martha, as if they were seeing much more than a little girl in a pink dress with daisies.

  “Oakley,” she said in a thin, dry voice. “You live at 319 Jacaranda Road?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “With your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your little dog.”

  “I don’t have a little dog,” Mary Martha said uneasily. “Just a cat named Pudding.”

  “But there’s a dog in your neighborhood, isn’t there? A little brown mongrel that chases cars?”

  “I never saw any.”

  “Never? Perhaps you don’t particularly notice dogs.”

  “Oh yes, I do. I always notice dogs because they’re my favorites even more than cats and birds.”

  “So if you had one, you’d certainly protect it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Louise leaned across the desk and spoke in a smiling, confi­dential whisper. “If I had a dog that chased cars, I wouldn’t be anxious to admit it, either. So of course I can’t really blame you for fibbing. Just between the two of us, though—”

  But there was nothing between the two of them. The child, wary-eyed and flushed, began backing away, her hands jammed deep in her pockets as if they were seeking the roots of the embroidered daisies. Ten seconds later she had di
sappeared out the front door.

  Louise watched the door, in the wild hope that the girl would decide to come back and change her story—yes, she had a little dog that chased cars; yes, one of the cars was an old green Ford coupé.

  There was a dog, there had to be, because Charlie said so. It had chased his car and Charlie, afraid for the animal’s safety, felt that he should warn the owner. That’s why he wanted to find out who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road. What other reason could he possibly have had?

  He’s not a liar, she thought. He’s so devastatingly honest sometimes it breaks my heart.

  She rubbed her eyes. They were dry and gritty and in need of tears. It was as if dirt, blowing in from the busy street, had altered her vision and blurred the distinctions between fact and fantasy.

  “Don’t talk so fast, lamb,” Kate Oakley said. “Now let me get this straight. She asked you if you had a little brown dog that chased cars?”

  Mary Martha nodded.

  “And she wouldn’t believe you when you denied it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “It’s crazy, that’s what it is. I declare, I think the whole world has gone stark staring mad except you and me.” She spoke with a certain satisfaction, as if the world was getting no more than it deserved and she was glad she’d stepped out of it in time and taken Mary Martha with her. “You’d expect a librarian, of all people, to be sensible, with all those books around.”

  Immediately after Kate’s departure, Ralph MacPherson made two telephone calls. The first was to the apartment where Sheridan Oakley claimed to be living. He let the phone ring a dozen times, but, as on the previous afternoon and evening, there was no answer.

  The second call was to Lieutenant Gallantyne of the city police department. After an exchange of greetings, Mac came to the point:

  “I’m in the market for a favor, Gallantyne.”