“He shouldn’t have let himself be caught. Besides, I wanted the guy to think he’d got away with it, so maybe he’d try again.” Trehearne took his feet off the desk. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands as
loose and relaxed as his face. He seemed tired, and bored, and deeply, very deeply, annoyed.
“That house,” he said, “is going to be watched. All those people are going to be watched. I’m going to make it as tough for them as I can. They’re not dumb. They’ll know it. I’m going to make ’em work. By Jesus, I’m going to make ’em sweat, figuring out what they’ve got to do. But they’ll go ahead and do it. They can’t wait. This isn’t murder for profit, or convenience. It isn’t coldblooded. It’s hot, and it’s violent, and that kind of murder won’t wait.”
Chapter Seventeen
The cab pulled to a stop in front of the house on the hill. Michael Vickers got out. The cabby handed him a parcel, accepted a bill, said good night, and drove away. There were no bullet holes in the rear windows. It was dark, the soft incomplete darkness of early evening, and it was quiet on the hill, and very peaceful. Vickers mounted the steps.
The door opened. Angie came out and took his arm closely in hers. She said,
“How are you, darling?”
“Fine. Trehearne behaved himself admirably. I think it pained him, but he did. When did they let you go?”
“Around two o’clock.” They were in the hall now. Angie closed the door. Coolin and Molly came from the direction of the kitchen and descended upon Vickers with passionate delight. The tangled mass of hounds and people made its way toward the living room. In the archway, Vickers stopped.
After a moment he said, “Hello, Bill.” There was neither welcome nor distaste in his voice. Joan Merrill sat in a corner, knitting. She looked up, but she did not speak.
Bill Saul, who was comfortably settled with a tall drink, studied Vickers and grinned.
“They’re getting better and better with the rubber hose,” he said. “It doesn’t show on you at all.”
Vickers laughed shortly. “It shows on Trehearne. He’s getting as tired of me as I am of him.” He came into the room and dumped the parcel on a chair. “He now knows everything about me except what he wants to know.”
“Which is?”
“Whether or not I killed Harry. Or rather, how to prove I killed him. I know he’s convinced I did.” Vickers swung around suddenly and took both of Angie’s hands in his. He held her off and looked at her, then drew her in to him. “How are you, Angie?”
“Tired.” She smiled. “And relieved.” Her face was without color, pinched and drawn with weariness. But she was beautiful. Vickers thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as she was then. He kissed her.
“How did they treat you? Were they all right?”
She shrugged. “They were just trying to find out about Harry. It’s their job. Yes, they were all right.” She seemed not to want to think about it. She touched the parcel. “What on earth is this?”
“Oh.” He pulled the wrapping open. “There’s an inventory somewhere. One man’s suit, gray. One shirt, white. One pair men’s shoes, Oxfords, black. And so on. These things have been put through every test known to human science and have been found pure. No blood. I know Trehearne was horribly disappointed.”
Over in her corner, Joan Merrill’s knitting needles broke rhythm, slowed, and came to a stop. She did not look up. After a while she began to knit again.
Angie said to Vickers, “I know I shan’t want to wear my things ever again.” She shuddered and turned away. “Will you have a drink?”
“Definitely. You ready for another, Bill?”
“Thanks.” Saul handed his glass to Angie, then looked at Vickers. His eyes smiled, but the smile was barbed with malice. Vickers thought, He’s always got a private joke. One with a sting in it. Is he laughing at me, or at himself, or just at a little thing called creation? I suppose he’ll look like that when he dies.
Saul said, “Your little wife has your welfare at heart, and no fooling. I’ve had to hold both her hands to keep her quiet.”
Vickers nodded pleasantly. “Thank you, Bill. It’s always nice to know that some strong capable man has one’s wife’s welfare at heart. Have they been questioning you any further, Bill?”
“Oh, sure. A character named Doyle has been hanging around my place. I think he’s on the make for Peggy. Thanks, Gorgeous.” He accepted his refilled glass from Angie, and then watched her and Vickers sit down together on the couch. “Ah, me. A touching sight. Joan, I ask you. Don’t they look like an ad for the benefits of marriage?”
Joan glanced up, briefly. Very briefly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, they do.” She gathered up her knitting. ‘I’m very tired. Unless you want something –” she was looking at Angie and no one else – “I’ll go on upstairs.”
Angie said, “Of course, dear. I don’t know what we’re going to do about eating, everything’s so upset. I can bring you a tray...”
‘I’m not the least bit hungry.” Joan crossed the room and picked up the bundle of Vickers’ clothes. “I’ll lay these in your room, Michael.”
“Don’t bother with them. I’ll take ’em up later.”
“It’s no trouble,” she said, a trifle stiffly. She mounted the low steps to the hall.
“Joan.”
She stopped and turned around. “Yes, Michael?”
He had risen and was standing uncertainly on the verge of doing or saying something. Joan remained quite still, hugging the bundle of clothing in her arms. Finally Vickers said, half curtly,
“Thanks for getting Angie out of that.”
She said quietly, “There’s nothing to thank me for.”
Vickers waited until she had reached the foot of the stairs before he spoiled her exit by saying frankly, “I know it. I was merely trying to be civil.” She shot him one furious glance over her shoulder, and he bowed. “Good night, Joan.” He sat down again and shook his head. “That isn’t a sweater she’s knitting. That’s a noose. She and Trehearne are going to fasten it on me together and tie it with a true lover’s knot.” He put his hand on Angie’s knee. “Really, sweet, I know she’s your bosom friend and all that. But she has been down there since early morning trying to talk me right into Death Row. I mean, there is a limit!”
Bill Saul said, “You don’t have to tell us. We’ve been hearing it ever since the gals got out of clink. Sam Leiber and I formed a welcoming committee, since you were in conference, so to speak, and Sam finally told Joan she could get herself into trouble talking that way. Libel, or something.”
Angie sighed. “Poor Joan. And she’s only trying to help me.” She looked pleadingly up at Vickers. “Darling, you’ve every right to throw her out, but for my sake, will you be patient just a little while? I’ll talk to her, try to straighten her out...”
He studied her, half sardonically amused at himself for listening to her. “And if she won’t straighten?”
“Then I suppose she’ll have to go.”
Joan Merrill, bent in an attitude of listening over the newel post at the top of the stairs, heard Angie say that clearly enough. Her voice was unhappy, extremely so, but it was also decided. Joan’s already pale face became dead white, and a stab of pain went through her. It started in the pit of her stomach and went up into her heart, so that she heard the rest of the conversation in the living room as a disconnected blur of words. She heard Vickers say that he would leave it to Angie to work out. She heard Bill Saul laugh, and tell Vickers he was certainly a changed man, because four years ago Joan would have been thrown to the dogs, literally, without a by-your-leave. She heard Vickers say quietly that Joan had been a good friend to Angie. By that time she had her breath again. She went slowly down the hall to Vickers’ room. The voices downstairs became detached, far away from her. She was quite alone.
She went into Vickers’ room and stood there, just beyond the door, holding the clumsy bundle of clothing and her knitt
ing bag. She was not looking at anything in particular. She did not move. She was thinking, I shall be lonely. I shall be very lonely, without her.
Presently she walked over to the bed and put down the things she carried and began to lay the clothes out neatly. The shoes she examined closely, then went to the wardrobe and inspected the shoes that were in it. She found a pair almost identical with the ones she held in her hand. These she took and placed in her knitting bag, returning the original pair to the tidy pile of clothing. Then she went out and continued down the hall to her own room, carrying the heavy knitting bag with the toes of Vickers’ black Oxfords sticking out of it. There was no need to make sure first that the coast was clear. She could hear them below in the hall. Bill Saul was leaving.
He was saying, “Mind if I drop around occasionally? With Job and Harry gone, I haven’t anybody left to play gin rummy with.”
Angie said, “What’s wrong with Peggy?”
“She doesn’t know a run from a hole in her stocking, and besides she can’t count above two.”
“And besides,” said Angie, “you’re getting a little bored with her.”
“A little,” said Bill. “Kee-rist! And she sticks to me like a friendly drunk. She won’t even fight with me. She just puts her head in my lap and goes to sleep. What can you do?”
Angie laughed. “Poor Bill. You just can’t seem to find the right combination. What are you going to do when you run out of girls?”
“Is that possible?” he asked. His pale, clear eyes were studying Angie. There was a look in them. His mouth smiled and his voice was casual, but there was a look in his eyes. “I guess maybe it is, at that. And if that happens, Vick will sure as hell have to go back to Mexico.” He glanced at Vickers and said plaintively, ‘I’m still damned if I can see why you had to come back at all.”
“It was inconsiderate of me.”
“Damn right it was. Another eight or ten years and I’d have got somewhere with this gal.”
“So sorry,” said Vickers. “I should have thought of that.” Saul stepped out through the open door and Vickers leaned on the door jamb, his free arm sliding around Angie’s waist. “Drop around any time, Bill. Glad to have you.”
Saul smiled. Light fell obliquely across his face, breaking it into sharp angular planes, a chiaroscuro Satan.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll do that.” He did not move to go. He stood looking at Vickers, still smiling, an odd sort of half-forgotten smile that had no kindness in it. He said softly, “Do you still think this is fun, Vick? Are you enjoying yourself?”
Vickers relaxed against the door jamb. He said, “It all does have its elements of humor, don’t you think?” He tightened his arm around Angie’s waist, drew her in against him until her body was moulded to the lazy curve of his own. There did not seem to be anything false or studied about the movement. Angie fitted there as though she belonged. Her lashes were lowered, her eyes and the expression of her face veiled in shadow. Vickers, too, was indistinct, standing with his back to the light, but Bill Saul could see that he, too, was smiling, and that it was a peculiarly merciless thing to be called a smile.
Vickers moved his hand up over Angie’s breast, a deliberate, bold caress.
“Good night, Bill,” he said.
Saul nodded and turned abruptly on his heel and went away. Vickers moved to go back inside, and Angie pulled herself away from him. She walked quickly down the hall, not far, then spun around and came back. He had closed the door and stood somberly watching her. Her cheeks were crimson, her eyes blazing. She slapped him, hard, across the face. Tears, slow and widely spaced, ran down her cheeks. They looked as hot as her eyes.
He caught her shoulders and said, almost roughly, “Don’t you understand?”
“What do you think I am, Vick – another Peggy, to be pawed over anytime you feel like it? I thought you...”
“Listen to me.” All his lazy self-sufficient ease was gone now. “Bill was lying last night. He had to be, or – or I’m off my head. He came up here to do something. That man Trehearne brought in – I’ll swear Bill hit him to get him out of the way. Then he changed his mind, because he knew that something was wrong. He played the whole thing off against me, so now if anything ever happens he’s in the clear and I’m suspected of lunacy, and he’s got you and Joan for witnesses.”
Angie was still rigid and angry between his hands. Her shoulder bones were cracking in his grip, but she was not going to complain. She said steadily, “What has that got to do with pawing me in front of Bill?”
“He wants you. Christ, he was practically raping you on the doorstep, the way he was looking at you. You’re the only reason he has for any of this. He’s tried twice to kill me. He’ll try again. He’s got to, because he can’t stand the thought of your being with me. It was all right as long as you were alone. But not now. I wanted to bring it to his mind. I wanted to slap him in the face with it.”
He let her go, suddenly, almost pushing her. “We’ve got to finish this,” he said. “I don’t care how it’s done or what happens, as long as it’s finished.”
She studied him. She had not realized how tired he was. Her expression softened, turned grave.
“Yes,” she said. “We are right back at the beginning.” Weariness overcame her suddenly. Her body felt drained and hollow, her head like a great dull weight. She sank down on a chair.
‘I’m afraid, Vick. What’s going to happen? The police, and you and me and Bill, and poor Joan – what’s going to happen?”
He did not answer for a moment. He could not. He had to wait, until the pain in his head eased off enough so that he could see around it. Until the fear let go of his insides enough so that he could breathe. He was hearing Bill Saul’s voice saying, For your sake, for Angie’s sake – will you see a psychiatrist?
He heard Angie say, from a great distance, “Vick, are you all right?” He felt her hand on his arm. He reached out blindly and caught her to him, and the fear went away and the pain didn’t matter anymore because there was something born in him that was much greater than either one of them. It was not love. It was not passion. It was anger. Sheer, simple, primitive, murderous anger.
He whispered, “Someone has done this to me. And by Christ, I’m going to get him.”
Upstairs in her room, with the door locked, Joan Merrill carefully pricked the fourth finger of her left hand with a needle she had sterilized by holding it in the flame of a match. She laid the needle down and kneaded the finger until the blood began to flow steadily. The black Oxfords she had taken from Vickers’ room were laid on a newspaper on the floor. Standing erect, she held her hand over them and let the blood splash on the tips of them. It glistened darkly against the black polish. Just a little blood. Only a drop or two. She was careful not to get any inside the shoes.
Wrapping a bit of cotton tightly around her finger, she took a linen handkerchief and wiped the blood off of the shoes, after giving it a few minutes to sink in. Then she put the shoes in the back of her closet, with the newspaper wrapped around them. The handkerchief she hid where it would be safe until she could get rid of it for good. Then she went to bed.
The next morning she got out the shoes again and polished them carefully all over with black polish, and put them in the sun to dry.
Chapter Eighteen
The morning passed quietly. It was one of those times when there seemed to be nothing to do and even less to say. Joan spent most of the time in her room. She gave no sign that she had overheard any of the conversation the night before. She merely said that she was tired and overwrought, and wished to rest. Angie and Vickers got a late, slow breakfast and then went down by the pool and stretched out in long chairs and lay in the sun.
Vickers had a peculiar feeling of relaxation and emptiness. It was almost a feeling of peace. He lay in the sun, half drowsing, and there was no sense of time, no urge to be and think and do. He puzzled over this condition. He tried to drive his mind to grapple with the things that were
going to decide his life, and Angie’s life, and very probably somebody’s death, and his mind reached out with the hands of a child. It picked up the thoughts of hate and murder like beach pebbles and let them fall again. It was concerned only with the motion of the turquoise water against the tiles.
He glanced at Angie. She lay close to him, her chair facing his. He looked at her brown legs and the lift of her breasts, and the deep blackness of her hair. Her eyes were closed, her mouth remote and soft and a little sad. Vickers had a swift strange feeling of distance, as though she were far away and completely unfamiliar. Once or twice before he had felt like that, in the last four years. It seemed that when life and its involvements with emotions and the personalities of other people became too complex, one retreated into oneself. One grasped at the all-important I, and everyone else was a stranger. The emotional lines broke down, and there was no communication. One sat safely wrapped up in one’s own personal flesh and rested. Perhaps it was sheer self-preservation.
He wished that this were not so. He was amazed to find that he did not want to be separated from Angie. He was even more amazed at the violence with which a thought burst into his conscious mind. She must have told the truth, she must love me, because otherwise there is no one on God’s earth who has told me the truth, or who has loved me. Me, as Michael Vickers. To Pépon and Amelita I was – somebody else, and that was different. I can never go back to them.
The implications of this thought struck him so harshly that he sprang up as though to escape some physical threat. He moved so abruptly that Angie started awake, half rising. He saw her eyes widen, searching for him, and he saw the deep fear in them, and heard his name on her lips. His psychic isolation was knocked suddenly to the four winds. No one, he thought, could look like that and not mean it.
He smiled at her. “It’s all right, darling. Just a bee about to sting me.” She accepted the lie, still looking at him, still afraid, but relaxing a little, and he watched the relief come into her face. Relief for him, that he was safe, that nothing had happened. He stooped and kissed her forehead.
Stranger At Home Page 16