THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  Almost simultaneously Hartwig’s dog recognized and started towards him at almost the same time he got close enough to the car to ascertain it held another passenger. It was a woman obviously. Golden red hair like that belonged to only one person that he knew and this, of course, was Gloria. Harper’d obviously brought her out there at her request, for as long as he’d known both, Gloria’d never shown any interest in Harper. Matter of fact she’d gotten in on our joke and felt he fit the role of Dracula perfectly.

  “I… You see how I’m careful to cover my neck when I’m around him don’t you?” She’d seriously look us over until we burst out laughing.

  Then, of course, it was like the side of the mountain’d exploded and out flowed lava. As he approached, Sandy backed away from the car which spun rubber and quickly peeled off up the highway. And like one stunned by the explosion Sandy backed up against the porch fence and stood transfixed as though glued to it. Hartwig said she looked like a mother who’d just lost her child. The one in the painting by Raphael. Her expression on the other hand was surreal, moreover she was burbling nonsense more like a madwoman than the scatterbrain she actually was.

  As Hartwig approached her he must’ve known it was all over though not exactly why until she, of course, at the proximity of his approach suddenly snapped out of her delirium and said ostentatiously before all the regulars on the porch,

  “You fucker. You sold me out.” Her grey eyes riveted Hartwig like two lasers that would’ve vaporized him at that moment if she’d had those powers. The sort of thing that actually happens in the movies. At that pronouncement, naturally, Hartwig knew the score though it’d be some minutes (very embarrassing ones too) before he could admit it to himself.

  “What’re you talking about?” He said. “What happened?”

  “You know exactly what happened. It was merely a game you were playing with me and believe me I’m no plaything. You’re just something else I won’t even say it.” She turned to her friends among whom was Mort the scriptwriter who was actually hugging her in sympathy before she broke down again. This time she lurched against several tables and entered the quaint well-lighted bar with burgundy carpets. It was virtually empty. Hartwig naturally followed her glad now to avoid the watchful eyes of her friends (and his).

  “Look!” He said. “I don’t know what they told you but it’s not true. Gloria’s just jealous. She’d say anything. There was a little game, of course, but that was a long time ago before I knew you. That didn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t now.”

  He appeared level headed and unafraid of any secrets he might’ve been withholding from her but the timing and the absurdity of the entire situation also overwhelmed him. Enough so that he was ready to give it all up and call it a day if he had to. Those two just couldn’t’ve driven all the way over the mountain then to… Any more than he could’ve set her up to have her take him abroad. It was incredible. The sheer awe of the timing itself and its air of comicality suddenly made everything bearable. He broke out laughing just as several of the regulars had begun to enter the bar. They would obviously think the affair a joke.

  “Come on,” said Hartwig. “Let me buy you a drink. We can work this out.”

  “You mean like the first time,” she said. “If I remember correctly it was I who bought you a drink. You…”

  She wanted to swear but controlled her anger. Then with a diabolical satiety she continued. “Can get your things and go. I never want to see you again. If you’re not gone by the time I get back I’ll call the cops.” She turned to one of her carpenter friends who’d just sat down. He was no novice to feuds. They happened in there sometimes but more often in the Windjammer where the commoners drank.

  Hartwig, I suppose, didn’t see another way out. He had no choice. He’d been denied a luxury trip abroad by a happenstance of fate, no more, once; then twice and whatever he was he obviously wasn’t vain enough to think he could fight it. Not even God could do that. Deny it perhaps but this he chose not to.

  “All right, if that’s the way you feel about it I’ll leave.” And he walked out the door nodding to several friends who obviously still didn’t know what’d just occurred. Everyone at the beach understood their darling was going abroad. This, of course, was the dingy rich broad Sandy as they all knew her by for everyone out there in one way or another either loved or hated her.

  Hartwig, of course, knew the residents at the beach’d soon hear the story. In her preposterous way his girlfriend’d sit right there, get drunk and like an overflowing sewer tell them at the same time she’d keep glancing around with the hope that Sarah, Marcus’s beautiful mother and her rival wouldn’t show up to gloat over her failure, which even a sober person could have detected from the beginning; that Hartwig was using her. She was an open book who wore her heart on her sleeve and always told everyone everything. As Hartwig walked back to his car followed by the dog, he was seething, of course.

  “Him seething? At what now?” Said Hammond. “What right did he have to seethe about anything? After all the entire affair was a hoax and he as much as admitted it, didn’t he. Why … you did at first, didn’t you? Something about a rotten business you never should’ve gotten involved in, remember? Despite being a rich ne’er do well, she’s a nice lady. She didn’t deserve it. Justice’d served its cause.”

  “Me?” I was surprised at Hammond’s association but even more by his memory. “What do you think Hartwig was miffed about? What’s any con man angry at? Anyone who’s ruined his scene and that was Harper and Gloria. He hated them both now. And, believe me, though easy going in many ways he wasn’t a forgiving person.”

  He went directly back to the beach house and avoiding the two kids, who were at the other end, he unpacked his things, leaving the luxury items she’d bought him, put them into his car and he and the dog took off. He drove back to his boat where he said he got plenty drunk on guess what, Junes’ Scotch no less, horrible stuff. Seems like she was supplying the neighborhood. Everyone had one of her bottles. I didn’t find out about the blowout until the next day. Everyone was really surprised.

  “And that God damned Harper,” said Hartwig. “Wait until I see him. I’ll kill him.”

  “Now calm down,” I said. “What good’ll that do? You know revenge never did anyone any good. You know that crackpot lawyer, the older man who’s formed what he calls ‘the world forgiveness alliance’. Follow him…” He shook his head. But, of course, he did get his revenge if you’d call it that. Everyone seems to. It’s in our nature. First on Harper; and then in another way much later on Gloria.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The very next day with a substantial hangover Hartwig drove his old jalopy up to Corte Madera, stopped in front of one of the apartment buildings that Harper managed and also lived in. Finding the old black Mercedes diesel, now an object of hatred, in its stall, he reasoned Harper was in and with considerable anger he went and knocked on Harper’s door. The face of Dracula, who else, peeked out through a crack.

  “Hartwig,” it said. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  “I want you,” said the angry rugby player.

  As Harper made to shut the only protection between him and an unwonted encounter, Hartwig’d been quick enough to stick his foot in it. Harper, believe me, with a madman like Hartwig after you, though he was no sissy, would’ve had absolutely no compunctions about calling the police and declaring an intruder was trying to break down his door. Unfortunately he never got the chance. The two went at it right there in the apartment. The punishment didn’t last long. Harper got in a few punches before getting knocked down. Then Hartwig left. Neither one’d mentioned a thing about the incident the previous night. That was the tacit premise between them like one general who declares a war on another over prior acts rendered.

  By the time Harper cleared his head and stood before his bathroom mirror to appraise his wounds, a very badly bruised eye, Hartwig was long gone. Apparently no one in the building had heard the disturban
ce; then what’d he have to gain by reporting the incident except more wrath by Hartwig. (Next time it might not’ve been so easy). He was desperately short of money and was counting on that thousand dollars he’d put forward when he’d been in better straits. Moreover Gloria’d worked on him to help her ‘do something’ once he’d revealed the scheme, which he also had progressively come to view as a ‘dirty business’. One he wouldn’t let himself be egged into. He might’ve broken our code of secrecy dishonorably but he’d also defended himself. Time to let things go.

  I saw him first when he came into the café wearing bulbous shades that told us everything.

  “What,” I said reaching over and lifting them just a bit above his temple, “the hell happened to you?” He then narrated his story. I went down and reasoned with Hartwig who obviously didn’t have a scratch on him.

  “Listen my good man,” I said. “I talked to Harper. He told me everything He’s sorry. Said he made a mistake, a big mistake. Shouldn’t’ve listened to a woman but minded his own business. He … he really needs the money but says now he wouldn’t take it back if his life depended on it. You can keep his share anyhow. You won the bet fair and square.” I’d brought with me the ten one hundred dollar bills just to be on the safe side. I held them out to him. Know what he did…?”

  “No, how’d I know?” Said Hammond.

  “He laughed in my face. Told me he didn’t want any money. Harper’s flesh had been good enough. Besides the entire plot was a joke to begin with. He couldn’t believe it himself now that it was over and he could objectify it. Then he asked me about Gloria. Seemed he was concerned about her all of a sudden I informed him she was doing fine at his mother’s. ‘She’s even got a new boyfriend, I think’.”

  “That’s good,” was all he said. “She’s a nice girl.” I could hear, I could actually hear the sincerity in his voice.

  Why right after that Hartwig and Harper made up and we were all together once more in our group of six. If only our little escapade could’ve ended that way, peacefully. But you know how it generally goes on earth. It’s not peaceful. It’s chaos. The universe is chaos and was born of it as the old philosophers suggest. The warring of the opposites. The other three also wanted to let Hartwig have the money but as with Harper’s he wouldn’t take it. He was magnanimous to the end.

  “Maybe not to the end,” said Hammond. “Maybe not to the end.” I heard him but I didn’t understand what he meant and he refused to reveal his sentiments.

  One who didn’t give up so easily, I went on, of course, was Sandy. And she had reason not to. Remember, she was the older party in the affair and she was the one who’d fallen in love. Whatever else is worth fighting for in this cursed world that’s one thing one doesn’t give up too easily though she’d always been able to overcome that problem before by finding another boyfriend immediately. There was, of course, another reason, which only she (and her doctor) knew about but that doesn’t manifest itself until later.

  Right then she thought things over. ‘Could that’ve been me? Could I’ve made the mistake? Been too brash in kicking him out?’ Rationalizations, of course, only one who’s blindly in love can make. Though she’d done nothing in the beach community except to display her usual impulsive and irresponsible self she no longer felt at home there, and, quite frankly, didn’t want to be there anymore. Without Hartwig, despite his obvious duplicity the entire world for her seemed to be covered in a pall.

  “So,” said Hammond, “what’d she do then; sell her beach house?”

  “No,” she simply spent all her time at her Sausalito condo, now really letting her son run rampant. Before, it seems, she’d gone back over the hill at least once or twice a week to check on him; now she felt it incumbent to stay in Sausalito to be near Hartwig to make sure he didn’t stray, if that seems too ridiculous.”

  “It … it certainly does,” said Hammond. “From what she’d found out about him, it seems, she shouldn’t’ve wanted to go anywhere near him but would’ve sold her condominium instead of her beach house just to be apart from him.”

  “I can see you don’t know women. At least women in love,” I said.

  They’ll do anything not only to get their lover back but to prove there must’ve been an invalid reason for them to’ve left in the first place. There must be something else to it. A threat on one’s life or a financial blowout. No one likes to think they’re so undesirable in their chosen’s eyes and’ll do almost anything to prove differently even when it can’t be done. Look at June though she appeared to’ve calmed down. There’s an old saying, no sense in banging your head against a stone wall, but try to tell that to some people. Try to tell it to Sandy. It was pathetic.

  She’d come into the café in which, by that time, as a scorned woman she should’ve been embarrassed to show her face, sit with us uninvited though we didn’t mind and felt humane in catering to her. She chattered on about absolutely nothing except him. ‘Where was he? What was he doing? Was he seeing anyone? He must’ve found another girlfriend?’ Hartwig, of course, wasn’t there. Harper, she’d turn to him who’d once been her informer. ‘Who’s he really seeing? What’s her name?’

  “What, no one?” Harper’d adjust his pageboy angrily. Her character really surfaced. A person’s generally does in trying circumstances. She was like a buzz saw that was attempting to cut down every tree in existence. She wasn’t waiting for the farmers and the loggers. No, she was out to do it all by herself, flatten the forests.

  If Hartwig came in and saw her talking to us he’d leave without approaching. If she saw him with us she wouldn’t come over since he wouldn’t speak to her anymore after she’d given him her ultimatum. He’d abided by it and intended to, even though she’d had every right in issuing it. He wasn’t a very forgiving man after all, if I do say so myself.

  One afternoon he even came home to his houseboat and he found her there. She’d used her own key and had come to have one last talk, which, of course, sounded like another threat in disguise.

  “You’re kidding?” Said Hammond “You mean she lowered herself…? Just being in the area’s an abdication of pride on her part and…”

  “Yes,” she did,” I said with a slight lump in my throat.

  This sick scion of one of the best families in the city had actually come there, gotten down on her hands and knees and scrubbed his toilet bowl with steel wool and Dutch cleanser for several hours before he arrived. This was to remove the calcium deposits that’d become encrusted on the thing over the years by various urines since the monstrosity had been built. The deposits evidently, like earth’s fossils, were as solid as lime on a rock. She hadn’t made much headway for all that but she’d certainly put in the effort. Perspiration had broken out on her forehead and her arm was so stiff she could hardly hold it up. For one who’d been born so rich and spoiled she certainly wasn’t allergic to hard physical work. Her ranch experience had verified that.

  “Sandy,” said Hartwig in semi disgust as he walked in to find her and the dog. “What are you doing here? I thought I said I didn’t want to talk anymore. We were through. You said so. You kicked me out.” He threw up his hands authoritatively.

  “Just a few words.” She demurred and got up off her knees as he peeked over into the toilet bowl to uncover her industry. He, of course, merely shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to have someone clean that old bowl. Matter of fact, it, like everything else in that house was so old he was getting ready to rid himself of the whole thing. He’d sold it and was moving it back to the city.

  “No, no words,” he said as she sat down on his couch petting the dog next to her. “Now give back the key.” He’d forgotten she’d had it. It’d been so long since he’d given it to her or rather so much’d happened and he’d removed the one hidden outside under the old pot. He hadn’t been thinking only of Sandy, but Gloria too. He was protecting himself from both of them.

  Not wanting to indulge in another physical confrontation with her, however, Ha
rtwig heard her out. Trembling and in a very shaky voice she said, trying to be as official as possible for anyone obviously so much in love, she blurted in cracked innuendo,

  “I … I thought of what you said,” she claimed. You could tell it was hard for her to be so humble. “You were right, it didn’t matter what you did, if anything. So what’s an old bet between fellows? I’ve talked to mother and she said forget it. I saw that on my own It was just that, that night I wasn’t ready for it,” she tried to smile “your friend Harper. He’s certainly a dandy. Anyhow if you’ll come back we can go on as planned. No one (at the beach) seems to think you’re a bad guy come on, what’s say. Let’s make the trip?” She forced a smile. She was thoroughly honest and trying hard for reconciliation all the while Hartwig, who remained standing, looked down upon her in condescending amusement as though he was an instructor listening to an admission from one of his pupils. She probably even thought of trying sex on him as she’d done before but realized this wasn’t the time for it, a milestone in her life’s approach. Finally when she seemed to be through he lowered the boom.

  “Look,” he said, “I know what you’re saying but it wouldn’t work. We’re really not that compatible. Tell your mother hello? She’s a nice woman. Besides I’m leaving the scene. I’m going back to the city and I’ve sold the boat.” He appeared as unconcerned as ever.

  “So, your answer’s no?” She perked up. “What if I were to buy the boat?”

  “You?” He said. “What’d you do with it? You can’t live in it, not around here. Besides you’ve got your place in town you don’t need two. No, I already have a buyer but thanks for the offer,” he put in like a condescending salesman about to make a deal. And this did make her mad. She stood up and lashed out at him now more like her old or true self.