Gurton came to the door to meet him, smelling heavily of the cloves he was always chewing. “How’ve you been, Meech?”
“Fine.”
“Somebody’s got your table.”
“That’s all right. I’ll sit someplace else.”
“I thought you weren’t coming. I figured you were out of town. You haven’t been around.”
“I’ve been working.”
Gurton was an enormous man. He ate too much, and drank too much beer in his off-hours, and the only exercise he ever got was shuffling to the front door to greet his friends and counting his money at night after the place was closed. He enjoyed counting his money and he always took the day’s receipts home with him. To protect himself he carried a Colt automatic. He knew, theoretically, how to use it, but he was actually more terrified of the automatic than he was of any robber. Gurton was convinced that someday, in spite of the safety catch, it would go off accidentally and cripple him, or explode in his pocket and blow him to pieces. Like a man putting all his eggs in one basket, Gurton had loaded all his worries and fears into the automatic.
“You got your name in tonight’s paper,” he said.
“Did I?”
“I rang up all my kids and said, Meech has his name in the paper. You want to see it?”
“No.”
“You aren’t human.” Gurton shook his head and his jowls flapped like a turkey’s wattles. “I knew this guy Loftus that you found dead. Not by name, but once I saw his picture I recognized him. He used to come in here about two, three years ago, with his girlfriend, a tall bright-looking redhead. They used to sit and drink coffee, never saw a pair that could drink so much coffee. After a while they stopped coming in and I thought they must have broken up or got married.”
“They got married,” Meecham said, “and moved to another town.”
“Is that a fact? It didn’t mention that in the paper.”
“They were divorced after a short time and the woman was killed in an auto accident out West.”
“That’s too bad. I always feel sorry when people get divorced or don’t get married at all, which is even worse.”
Meecham knew what was coming and tried to avoid it by picking up the menu.
It came anyway. “It’s no good for a man, always being alone. You ought to get married, Meech, start having a few kids to put a little zip in your life and to give you something to leave behind you. Take this guy, Loftus, what did he leave behind him, eh?”
“Seven hundred and sixteen dollars.”
Gurton looked disappointed. He hadn’t expected or wanted an answer. “Now how come you know that?”
“You’re getting nosy, Gurton.”
“I’ve always been nosy.”
“It’s bad for business.” Meecham put the menu back in its metal holder. “I’ll take the veal cutlets. Mind if I use the phone in your office?’’
“Go ahead. The cutlets are no good, it’s the wrong time of year for veal.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“That reminds me, you know what the priest said to the butcher at confession? He said, you’re cutting up too much.”
“That’s a howl.”
“I consider it funny,” Gurton said with dignity. “Thank God I don’t work so hard that I have no sense of humor left, like some people.”
Gurton’s office was a small room on the mezzanine. In contrast to the meticulously neat kitchen downstairs, the office was littered with papers and letters, magazines, canceled checks, watch folders and half-empty packs of cigarettes.
Meecham closed the door and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk. It took him five minutes to find the telephone directory, which had fallen into the wastebasket. Hearst was listed as Jameson R. Hearst, 611 Division Street. He dialed 2-6306.
Emmy Hearst answered the phone. She sounded as if she’d been crying again and he knew she must have found out about Loftus by this time.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Mrs. Hearst?”
“Yes.” There was a hum of activity in the background, voices and music and bursts of laughter. It was seven o’clock; Mrs. Hearst’s “boys” would all be home. Meecham recalled the first night he’d gone to see Loftus’ room; how incongruous it had seemed to him that Loftus should live in a house so full of youth and vitality.
“This is Eric Meecham. Is Mr. Hearst in? I’d like to talk to him.”
“What about? Jim doesn’t know anything.”
“It’s a trivial matter,” Meecham said, hoping that it was. “I don’t want to bother you about it, you’ve had a bad time.”
“I wish I were dead,” she said in a low flat voice. “I wish I were dead.”
“Words aren’t much good, I know, but I’d like to assure you that he didn’t suffer. I saw him afterwards.”
“He didn’t leave any note, any message?”
“No.”
“It said in the paper that he talked to the guard all night.”
“To the orderly, yes.”
“Did he talk about—me?”
“I guess he talked about everything.” He couldn’t give her the bald truth, that Loftus had talked only about Birdie. Mrs. Hearst didn’t even know of Birdie’s existence. The first night when she discussed Loftus with Cordwink she’d said, Earl tells me everything and he’s never mentioned a wife. It would be a cruel blow to her when she found out about Birdie. Meecham knew that eventually she must find out. He said, “I know it’s hard to be realistic in a situation like this, Mrs. Hearst. But the fact is, Earl had very little time left anyway. He would have died soon.”
“I can’t—talk about it anymore. I—I—I’ll call Jim.”
There was a long pause, then the sudden sharp slamming of two doors and the background noises ceased.
“Yes?” Hearst said. “Who’s this?”
“Eric Meecham.”
“The lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it. I expected to hear directly from her.”
Meecham made a little sound of surprise, then covered it with a cough. “She couldn’t manage it—too many people around.”
“She’s got no business calling a lawyer in on a thing like this. I don’t like it.” There was a moment’s silence. “Is the agreement ready?”
“She’s still thinking it over.” He wasn’t sure yet who the “she” was—Virginia or Mrs. Hamilton—and he had no idea what agreement she was supposed to have made. He made a blind guess: “Your asking price is a little high.”
“I never mentioned money,” Hearst said. “I’m an honest man. If she said I mentioned money she’s a liar. I wouldn’t take a red cent from her. Just try me. Offer me money and I wouldn’t take it, see?”
“What exactly do you want?”
“I told her what I want.”
“She didn’t make it clear to me. She was quite upset.”
“I want a chance. A future. There’s no future in a town like this for a man like me. I can do things once I get a chance.”
“So?”
“Well, supposing she buys a new car and needs somebody to drive it back to California for her.”
“You’ll drive it back.”
“Sure, that’s right. And then when we get there, she’s got a lot of connections, she could fix me up with a job, maybe around a movie studio, maybe as her regular chauffeur.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Sure, it’s reasonable, Mr. Meecham.” He sounded almost pathetically eager. “She’s got nothing to be upset about. All I’m asking is a favor in return for the favor I’m doing her.”
“She didn’t tell me what your favor was.”
Hearst hesitated, like a small boy playing cards, want
ing to win the game on his own but tempted to show everyone what a good hand he had. “It’s a personal family matter,” he said.
“I see.” Meecham was sure now that the “she” was Mrs. Hamilton, and the “family” was Virginia, and the only connecting link between them and Hearst was through Loftus. But he didn’t know what this link was. Loftus had not been friendly with Hearst, he wouldn’t have confided in him; in fact, he had never even confided in Mrs. Hearst with any degree of truth.
“What I want,” Hearst said, “is an agreement.”
“What kind of agreement?”
“One that’s written down and legal, like a contract.”
“You’ll have to specify the exact terms. I can’t draw up a contract without ...”
“Sure, sure, I know that.”
“We’d better have a talk about it some time,” Meecham said, deliberately evasive.
“Some time. Say, what do you think this . . .?”
“How about the day after tomorrow at four, or early next week?”
“Stop trying to stall me. It’s now or never, as far as I’m concerned. I want that agreement.”
“All right.” Hearst had reacted as he expected. “I’ll pick you up and we’ll go over to my office. Say in about half an hour?”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Good.”
Meecham hung up, replaced the telephone directory exactly where he’d found it, in the wastebasket, and went downstairs to his table. His dinner was waiting for him, not the veal cutlets he had ordered, but a platter of fried chicken over which Gurton was hovering and clucking like a fat old hen.
“Gurton.”
“Now listen, Meech, the cutlets were no damn good, understand? Not fit for my mother-in-law. Not fit for a . . .”
“Are you still carrying that Colt automatic?”
“I have to.”
“How about lending it to me for a while tonight?”
“What for?”
“I’m going calling on a few friends.”
“You with a gun, Meech? That don’t make sense. No sir, I wouldn’t lend you my gun no more than I’d serve you those cutlets. Suppose it goes off and hits you in the leg and then you have your leg amputated? How about that? Anyway, what kind of friends are these, that you’ve got to carry a gun?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“You’re mixed in with funny people, eh?”
“Some of them are funny. Some of them are quite serious.”
“Bejesus, Meech, I think you’re kidding me. You don’t want my gun.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
“Guns are for crooks and crazy people and suckers like me who have to carry money around on a dark night. Now here’s a funny thing—nobody’s my friend in the dark. I see a guy coming up the alley on my way home, and I know him and he knows me, but he’s not my friend, understand? I always want to turn around and run. That’s what darkness does to people.”
“Or money does.”
“Well, anyway, I’m glad you were kidding. For a minute there I took you honest-to-God-serious.”
“Yes, so did I,” Meecham said.
All during dinner he wondered what kind of crazy impulse had made him ask Gurton for the automatic.
I’m nervous, he thought, like Gurton carrying his money in the dark. I have no friends. I know them and they know me, but I want to turn around and run.
19
The night was turning cold, and an eager new wind raced up and down the streets. Under the lights the sidewalks and the limbs of trees shone icy.
Meecham moved stiffly toward the house with his brief case in his hand. During the past hour when the weather had changed, some of Mrs. Hearst’s boys had made a slide of ice, three or four yards long, from the sidewalk to the porch steps. Meecham would have liked to try the slide, but the brief case felt heavy and he felt heavy. He thought, if this was another house and if Alice was with me, we might try the slide together.
On the porch, underneath the parlor window, there was a stepladder lying on its side, and a basket of pine branches and a spiral of copper wire, as if someone had started to decorate the house for Christmas and then lost interest. The parlor blinds were up, and the crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling blazed with light. A group of young men and girls were sitting around a table playing cards.
Meecham went up the steps and pressed the doorbell. The porch light went on instantly above his head like a spotlight. It stayed on for a few seconds and then it went off again, and the door was opened by Emmy Hearst. Her eyes were still puffed, but she’d put on some make-up and a black close-fitting dress that looked new and emphasized her slimness.
“Come in.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll have to talk in the kitchen. One of the boys is entertaining.”
She closed the door behind him and led the way down the hall. Following her, Meecham had the same impression of youth and energy that he’d had the first time he saw her standing at the sink humming to herself. It had been a shock then, as it was now, when she turned around and her face showed the bitter years.
“He isn’t here,” she said abruptly. “He had to go downtown. He asked me to tell you to wait.”
“For how long?”
“He didn’t say.”
“I had an idea that he wanted to see me as soon as possible.”
She crossed her arms as if holding herself together in readiness for a blow. “What about?”
“You’d better ask him.”
“I did. He wouldn’t tell me. But it’s bad, isn’t it?”
“I can’t very well discuss . . .”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.
“It’s about this murder? Isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
She sat down on the couch and began to pick bits of wool off the blanket that covered it. The floor was littered with fuzz, as if she had already spent hours sitting there picking at the blanket like an industrious bird gathering material for its nest. She spoke listlessly, without raising her head: “After you phoned him, he phoned someone else.”
“Who was it?”
“I heard him dialing but I couldn’t hear his words. Afterwards he came and told me he was going downtown for a package of cigarettes.”
“And I’m to wait here until he comes back?”
She turned the blanket over and began on the other side. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Why?”
“When he walked out the door I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to see him again.”
A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Meecham’s face leaving a cold moist track like a slug’s track. He said carefully, “I think I’d better try to find him.”
“Don’t. Let him go.”
“He has some information. I want it.”
“Information,” she repeated. “He’s taken you in. What information could he have? He was here, right in this house, when Margolis was killed. He was sleeping.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I saw him. That was the night I cut my arm. See, it’s still bandaged.”
She started to push up her left sleeve but Meecham stopped her. “Yes, I remember the bandage.”
“Well, that was the night it happened—Saturday. I had gotten up to take a sleeping pill. One of the boys broke the porcelain tap in the basin a week or so ago, and I fell against it in the dark and cut myself. I went into Jim’s room to see if he’d help me bandage it. But he was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him up. That was about 12:30.” She leaned forward, looking at him anxiously. “You don’t understand about Jim. He’s like a kid. He’s never had
much excitement, and when this—this business happened, we weren’t mixed up in it at all, but Jim—it went to his head. He’d say anything to be in on things, to be part of the excitement.”
“Someone might take him seriously.”
“No one who knows him.”
“There are a lot of people who don’t know him,” Meecham said. Including me, he thought. I take him seriously. “I’ll wait for another fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t show up I’ll start looking for him.”
“I don’t care.” She shook her head. “We’re through anyway. I’m going away. The car’s mine, I paid for it myself. I’m going to get in it and drive, just drive away somewhere, I don’t care where I end up.”
They were Virginia’s words, but she spoke them with more decision and assurance than Virginia had. Virginia might dream of leaving, pack her vague plans between layers of folded hopes; but Emmy Hearst would leave, get into her car and drive away without a backward glance. She was a forceful woman, and Meecham thought what a comic tragedy it was that such a woman would always choose emotionally stunted men like Hearst, or physically stunted ones like Loftus.
“I’ll stay with my sister in Chelsea for a while, and then, after that, I don’t know. Everything’s so vague and useless. When Earl was alive, no matter how bad things were, I always had a reason for living.” She leaned over suddenly, and with nervous fingers gathered up all the fuzz on the floor and squeezed it into a ball. “I loved Earl. He was the only person I’ve ever loved in my whole life. He was—perfect.”
“No,” Meecham said. “He wasn’t.”
“To me he was.” She went to the sink and threw the ball of fuzz into the garbage strainer, as if deliberately walking away from the argument. The supper dishes were still on the drainboard, two glasses, two plates, two of everything. Jim’s and Emmy’s, Meecham thought ironically. His and Hers.
Vanish in an Instant Page 17