Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  He was struggling hard with the sharp conviction that it was vital for him to keep on, that he had picked up threads already that, followed to their end, might mean the solution to Eddie Udall’s problems, and perhaps his own. For Gray himself was involved in this, too. Ever since the moment Whitey had splintered the lock of Gray’s door, it had been Gray’s problem, too.

  Some nagging memory from a long time ago had kept hammering at him on the way here. Now, suddenly, he had it. One of his first patients had told him a story…

  The patient’s mother had been a kind, affectionate woman. But with deep surprise the patient had unearthed a buried memory from childhood. He had remembered reaching for a can sitting on a table edge. He had remembered the hot fat that had spilled out of it and over his face. He had remembered, unwillingly, painfully, the most disturbing thing of all—the betraying momentary look of satisfaction on his mother’s face.

  Once that key had been found, a flood of memories had come back. The patient’s picture of his mother had been false. Unconsciously he had suppressed everything that had showed her in any light other than the one he had wanted to remember. The man’s childhood had actually been one long, terrified struggle against the powerful, destructive forces in his mother that had led her to do such things as set the can of hot fat where the child could reach it. And probably, of course, the woman herself had not been aware of her real motive.

  Gray had not been a psychoanalyst very long then, and he had been surprised and shocked at the revelation. Later, with experience, he had come to realize more clearly the infinite complexities of the human mind. What had driven the woman to such extremes he never knew. And yet he did know that many people have a need to destroy. That blind, burning hatred in them is sometimes so intolerable that they can never allow themselves to recognize it. They find other motives for what they do. But what they do remains the same—attack everyone and everything around them with a deadly destructiveness. The hot fat set for the child, the belittling scorn for the ambitions of relatives and friends—the switchblade knife striking home in a moment’s panic.

  Was Eddie one of those sick, destructive people? So many of today’s unhappy people were, young people and old. And it was a sickness, but a deadly sickness that eventually turned inward on itself.

  Gray struck the wheel a last decisive blow and got out of the car. He was remembering that whispering voice on the telephone, Whitey with the .38, Eddie with the switchblade. Matt Witczak rocking backward from Quentin’s slap.

  “No,” Gray thought. “I can’t stay out of it. This is my job.”

  Gray went down the narrow hall and knocked at a door dingy with the accumulations of years. There was no response. He listened, knocked again.

  Behind him a door creaked. He turned.

  A head with a scarf drawn tightly over the knobs of curlers peered out at him from an opposite room.

  Gray said, “I’m looking for Mrs. Udall.”

  The woman nodded at Blanche’s door. “You hear anything in there?”

  Gray shook his head.

  “Then she ain’t home. Morning, noon, and night it’s either her radio or her television. She’s got no consideration. You a friend of hers?”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” Gray said. “Know where I could find her?”

  “I got better things to do than keep an eye on that trollop. Anyhow, she ain’t been home much lately. That’s a blessing.”

  Gray looked inquiringly sympathetic. The woman leaned farther out the doorway.

  “This used to be a respectable place,” she said. “Before Blanche moved in it did. She’s taken to bringing them home with her now.”

  “Who?” Gray asked.

  “What do you want to see her for, anyway?”

  “It’s a business matter.”

  “Well,” the woman said doubtfully. “I guess so. If you’d showed up at two In the morning, like the rest of the men she picks up, I’d know what kind of business you mean. But a man like you—” She considered Gray’s clothing. “No, you wouldn’t want to see Blanche that way. These drunken bums she picks up, that’s different. Seems like they get worse and worse. But then she’s losing her looks something terrible. I guess she ain’t got much choice. I know for a fact she hasn’t worked in over a month.”

  “What does she live on?” Gray asked.

  The woman nodded wisely. “Those men—what else? If you want to see her you’d better do it quick. Take my advice. Blanche’s just about at the end of her rope right now. I never seen anybody so jittery. Like a cat on hot bricks. Other times she’s half-dead. If you ask me, she’s just about over the edge.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “Sick? More like she’s crazy, sometimes. All wound up or else dead on her feet. Acts like she’s drunk.”

  Gray said, “She drinks a lot, does she?”

  The woman looked puzzled. “I guess she tanks up before she comes home. I never see any bottles in her trash.”

  Gray said, “I really ought to see her. Have you any idea where I could look?”

  “She’s in trouble, ain’t she?” the woman asked, ignoring his question. “I can always tell. She acts like she’s scared to say anything even to her friends.”

  “It’s just business,” Gray said.

  “I bet she won’t even talk to you,” the woman told him. “Still—well, one place she hangs out sometimes is a couple of blocks south of here. A dive. The Bluebird or something. I wouldn’t be seen dead in it myself.”

  Gray said, “Thank you. I’ll try it.” He turned to go.

  “If you find her,” the woman called after him, “tell her from me if she leaves that radio on all night again I’m going to call the police. You tell her that.”

  “Thank you,” Gray said again. She slammed her door. Gray went on downstairs.

  There was no place called the Bluebird two blocks south, but there was a bar named the Blue Gander. Gray strolled in and leaned on the bar, glancing around the room. Only one woman was visible in the place, a big-boned blonde hunched over a full glass of beer at a table toward the back. Her hair looked dirty and uncombed, and a broad streak of grayish drab at the roots told how long it had been since she had given it any attention.

  Gray went back to the men’s room, past her table. A shabby handbag lay before her with a big, tarnished B on its flap. Blanche?

  He went back to the bar, ordered a rye, and began drinking it slowly. Presently a man at the end of the bar detached himself from a group of silent drinkers and went to lean over the woman’s table. She shook her head impatiently at him, and the man rejoined his group.

  Gray was about to order another rye when another man came in, peered toward the rear table, and called out, “Blanche, you want company?”

  The woman threw him a look of dislike, pushed away her still untasted beer, and got up. She walked rapidly past the bar and out the front door.

  Gray made a quick decision. It had to be Blanche Udall. Or he had to go on that assumption. He could speak to her, but he felt almost certain he wouldn’t learn anything that way. Everyone so far had been understandably close-mouthed. If he learned anything from these people, it would probably come later, after they had had time to think things over and perhaps would trust his motives better.

  As for Blanche, there seemed a purposefulness in her behavior now that had been lacking before. Gray decided he might learn more by following her than by any other method.

  He didn’t have to follow far. Two blocks one way, two blocks another, and they were on Market Street. Blanche’s destination became obvious as she headed for the ticket booth of a movie theater. Gray glanced up. The Rivera. She bought a ticket and went in, walking fast.

  The Rivera was a second-run house, with matinees daily. A musical comedy and a mystery film were playing now. Gray bought a ticket, handed it to the ticket taker, and glanced around the lobby. He saw no sign of Blanche.

  He said to the ticket taker, “Where did my wife go? She came in just a
head of me.”

  The man nodded toward the stairway, and Gray went up quickly. There was no balcony, he realized. At the head of the thickly carpeted stairs was a lobby with a few plants in pots, some chairs, and four doors. One was marked GENTLEMEN, one LADIES. The third obviously opened into the projection booth. The last said PRIVATE.

  Gray sat down in one of the chairs and waited. Five minutes passed slowly. He could hear from the auditorium of the theater the wail of a siren and the hollow barking of gunfire. Presently a woman came up the stairs and moved toward the door marked LADIES.

  Gray got up.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m afraid I may have missed my wife. I wonder if you’d mind seeing if she’s in there?”

  “Sure,” the woman said, and vanished. After a moment she came back, shaking her head. “Nobody in there at all,” she said. “You must have missed her.”

  Gray thanked her. He went quickly into the men’s room and glanced around, just in case. If Blanche suspected she was being followed…But the room was empty. Gray tried the door of the projection booth. It opened. The man in the dim, compact room inside looked up irritably. From the little slots before him the sounds of the film poured noisily. Gray said, “Sorry. I got the wrong door.”

  That left one last possibility.

  He knocked on the door marked PRIVATE.

  “Come in,” said a voice Gray had heard before.

  He opened the door and walked into a small office furnished in an expensive, conservative taste. There was only one person here. The man behind the desk looked up and said, “Yes?”

  Gray found himself gazing into the bleak, strong-jawed face of Tod Avery.

  They looked at each other blankly. Then Avery said, “Mr. Gray, isn’t it? What can I do for you?”

  Wild speculations jostled each other in Gray’s mind. He looked around the office. There were two other doors, one probably a closet. The second might be a way out.

  Gray said, “Did Blanche Udall come in here about ten minutes ago?”

  Avery’s hard, unhappy face tightened all over, the muscles bunching around his mouth. He slammed a desk drawer with a sound like a pistol shot.

  “My first impulse is to say no,” he told Gray frankly. “I don’t want anything to do with that woman. But I guess I’d better tell the truth. Yes, she did.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Avery nodded toward one of the doors. “She went out that way.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “To the street. You can’t have too many exits in a theater.”

  “What did she want?”

  Avery pushed a pen set back so hard it clashed against the letter basket. He was repressing anger, not very well.

  “Money,” he said. His voice sounded marveling. “Can you understand how a woman could do a thing like that? Come to me for money because the Udall boy’s in jail. She must be out of her senses.”

  “Did she think you’d give her anything? What was the pitch?”

  Avery shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I hear she’s been making the rounds of everybody involved in this terrible business. She isn’t rational. She seems to feel we’re all in it together—or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.” He opened a drawer and slammed it again nervously.

  “She’s just the kind of degraded, irrational human being you’d expect as Udall’s mother,” he said. “A boy who’d do what he did—a woman like Blanche Udall—they belong together. You can’t touch pitch…” His voice trailed off.

  Gray said, “Don’t you think maybe Blanche’s condition might be what’s to blame for Eddie’s problems? If he grew up with a background like that—”

  “What Eddie did, Eddie will have to pay for,” Avery said, his voice firm. “You’ve got to fix responsibility somewhere.”

  “Yes, I agree with that. You do have to. And I admit boys like Eddie make it awfully hard to sympathize with them sometimes. What we all have to remember is—” Gray paused. No use moralizing to Avery at this point.

  He said, “Well, sorry I disturbed you.”

  “Anything new on the Udall case?” Avery asked.

  “Not yet.” Gray turned away. “You’ll be notified if anything turns up. Thanks, Mr. Avery. I’ll see you.”

  He went down the carpeted stairs thoughtfully. So this was the theater where Eddie Udall had worked. Like any other theater, full of the smell of popcorn and stale tobacco smoke and the sound of voices from the screen repeating their lines over and over. It must get very monotonous toward the end of each film run, being an usher. But then, what in fife isn’t monotonous sometimes?

  He stood in the outer lobby gazing at the posters of coming attractions without seeing them, thinking.

  What next?

  He counted off on his fingers: Quentin, Witczak, the Reiners, Blanche. He would like to talk to Eddie again if there were any way to arrange it. What had he omitted?

  Stella.

  He sighed. Well, he would try Stella Ingram, see if he could find out from her what it was she had wanted so badly to tell Eddie on the day the police had come for him. Badly enough to send Witczak twice into the house where the police waited.

  He would try, and she would not tell him. But maybe the try itself might establish a sort of beachhead in her awareness, so that when he tried again next time a rapport would have been achieved and she would talk more freely. It was like psychotherapy, this endless questioning, this endless digging for secret things.

  12

  Stella Ingram’s voice was listless. “Come in if you want to,” she said. She stepped back, and Gray followed her into the narrow, crowded room. Looking at Stella, he had to fight hard to keep a smile off his face.

  She had done fantastic things to her features. The eyebrows were plucked away entirely except for a tuft at each inside edge. From these tufts, drawn in with careful strokes of an eyebrow pencil, wildly exaggerated arches zoomed across her forehead, the naked ridges of her normal brows catching the light starkly underneath.

  She had painted a careful, crimson sneer on her mouth with no reference whatever to the real lips beneath. But these pathetic reachings after glamour were a little smeary now, as if she hadn’t bothered to renew them today or to clean them off last night.

  Gray said, “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Eddie Udall. You know what kind of trouble he’s in now?”

  Stella huddled her arms together under her dingy blue quilted robe. She moved as listlessly as she spoke, and it seemed to take a perceptible interval between the time words were addressed to her and the time she got around to answering. She glanced around the untidy, cluttered room, not seeming to see it. Her eyes moved over the shelves, full of cheap souvenirs, holy pictures, a bright brass crucifix with a vase of dusty paper flowers under it. A framed photograph of Stella herself years ago, in confirmation dress and veil, flanked a posed portrait of Witczak with his hair impossibly slicked down and his face rigid. She didn’t seem to see any of it. She didn’t even look directly at Gray.

  She sat down on the edge of her unmade bed and said in a dragging voice, “Why can’t you just let me alone?”

  “Eddie could certainly use some help right now,” Gray said. “There isn’t much time left.”

  She sat silent. After a while she said, looking at the floor, “Why should I help Eddie Udall? Who ever did anything for me? I wish you’d go away.” She shivered under the dingy robe. “I’m busy,” she said. Gray waited. After another longish interval she added, “I was just going to— I’m busy. Can’t you come back some other time?”

  Gray said, “I can wait. I’m not in a hurry. Or I could come back in half an hour if you’d rather. But I’ve got to talk to you.”

  She looked at him directly for the first time. Then as if she hadn’t the energy to argue, she said, still in that dragging voice, “Well—wait a minute.” She got up and went slowly to the bureau, took out of the top drawer an old cigar box that rattled slightly. “I�
�ll be back after a while,” she said, and went out. Gray heard her slippers flapping along the hall, still at that nightmare pace. Then another door somewhere opened and closed.

  Gray leaned back in a rickety chair and waited. He looked around the room, reconstructing the girl’s life from what he knew of her. There was much to be said in favor of Stella Ingram, he thought, eying the souvenirs and the bright religious pictures. In spite of her curious depression today, he got the feeling as he looked around that she was a girl normally greedy for the happy things in life. The souvenirs must represent many hours spent in amusement parks and at fairs. What she had done to her face had to be the result of other hours entranced at the movies, reaching after glamour as eagerly as could a girl with Stella’s sharp limitations of money and experience. He liked the religious pictures, too. Her church seemed to play a solid part in the life she led.

  But there was a less happy side to what he knew. She lived alone here, so her landlady had told him. She worked only occasionally, at unskilled jobs that changed frequently. She seemed to have enough money to live on, but barely enough. Witczak was thought to contribute. Stella was just of age, just old enough to be her own problem now and nobody else’s. Except maybe Matt Witczak’s. Stella, like Eddie Udall, Gray thought, was poised here on the narrow edge between two ways of life, but with far less hope of anything better than Eddie had had up to two weeks ago.

  He waited what seemed like a long time. He was just beginning to wonder if she had gone for good when he heard the flapping slippers return along the hall, moving more briskly now. Stella came in, smiling.

  “Still here?” she said. “Glad you waited.” She returned the cigar box to its drawer and went over to sit down on the bed, bouncing a little as if she felt much better now.

  “What was it you wanted to know?” she asked.

  Gray looked at her narrowly. He started to speak, hesitated, and then said, “You used to go around with Eddie Udall, didn’t you?”