An Eye for an Eye

by Leigh Brackett

  In the street outside the snow was still falling, scattered flakes of white on the bleak dark backdrop of the night.

  nine

  Ernie MacGrath had a feeling. It was one of those things such as a man who has lived out of doors a lot will get about the weather, so that he is instantly sensitive without even knowing how to the smallest deviation from the norm. Ernie did not know weather that well, but he knew people, and it added up to the same thing. A pattern, a feel, a sound, a look.

  He had the feeling so strongly that after he left Ben Forbes he did not drive all the way down the road but only to the first house that had no lights in it. Here he pulled off into the driveway and sat thinking, trying to pin the feeling down.

  The texture of Ben’s behavior had altered. It was wrong.

  Ernie realized that a man in Ben’s position is not expected to behave in an ordinary way. But it was more than that. Subtle things. A tenseness involving Ernie himself, an element of falseness in everything Ben said and did. He had not been happy to see Ernie, he had not wanted to talk to him, and he had been anxious to have him go. You do not have to be a cop to know when you’re not welcome.

  It was almost, thought Ernie, as though I interrupted him in doing something I wasn’t supposed to see or know about.

  What?

  What would Ben be doing that he would want to hide from the man he had called in to help find his wife?

  Ernie swore. He was tired. He and his partner Bill Drumm had spent a long hard day checking out leads on a robbery that led to nothing but frayed tempers and aching feet. He wanted to go home and eat the dinner that Ivy was keeping hot for him. He wanted to take off his shoes and watch the Friday-night fights and forget about being a cop.

  But the feeling he had would not go quietly away like he wanted it to and leave his conscience clear. It spread instead into wider areas, as though Ben’s off-center behavior had been the one touch needed to bring it clearly into focus.

  The feeling now said that this whole business had had something sour about it from the beginning. It was too smooth, too clean, with none of the rough edges you would expect to find. This was a strictly negative thought and Ernie knew it. It did not necessarily mean a damned thing. But now that he had recognized it he knew it would itch at him like a burr.

  He swore again, dismally.

  If you were an ordinary man you went home and ate that dinner and relaxed. You said, “What the hell, of course Ben’s acting queer, who wouldn’t? And anyway he’s my friend. I trust him.”

  If you were a cop you knew your friends were not set apart by that relationship from the ordinary frail run of humanity. And you did not go home. You turned and drove slowly back along Lister Road, and your eyes and your mind were both wide open, waiting to receive. You did not know yet what was wrong or in what way or in what degree. You only knew you had to look into it.

  Ben’s car came bounding out of the drive and roared away toward Woodley. Ernie followed it.

  They broke all the speed laws. Twice Ben almost ran a red light, stopping at the last second with squealing brakes. And Ernie thought, He is in one hell of a hurry. I must have delayed him. He wouldn’t come with me because he had someplace else to go.

  So okay. So why didn’t he just say so?

  Ernie did not waste his time trying to find an answer for that question. He merely hung behind Ben’s car and waited.

  Ben obviously had no idea that he was being followed, so that Ernie was able to tag him easily until he turned off Norland Avenue, a main north-and-south street on the east side of Woodley, onto a side street of mixed apartment houses and dwellings. Then Ernie dropped back.

  Ben pulled in to the curb and Ernie pulled in too, half a block behind him. He watched Ben go into the apartment building. Then he got out and walked along the other side of the street until he came opposite the building and could look into the foyer. It was empty. Ernie crossed the street again and went inside.

  He glanced quickly at the mailboxes. None of the names meant anything to him. The inner door was not latched, either through custom or accident. He went into the first-floor hall.

  It was empty. Ernie went on cautiously to the foot of the stairs and looked up. He could hear Ben’s footsteps on the third and top flight. Ernie hesitated briefly and then ran on the strip of hall carpet to the back of the building and the service stairs, concealed behind a frosted-glass door with a red sign over it that said FIRE EXIT.

  He ran up the service stairs, stepping as quietly as he could on the scarred brown compo of the treads.

  When he reached the top flight he became extremely careful. He made no sound at all, and when he opened the door onto the third floor he did it so gently that it slipped open as quietly, and as little, as a slitted eyelid.

  Ben Forbes was talking to a woman in the doorway of an apartment not quite halfway down the hall on the right side. Just as Ernie saw him he stepped inside the apartment and the woman closed the door. But he got a good look at her. Young. Red hair, but beautiful, pulled into a thick pony tail that was all one springy curl. A pair of big beautiful knockers in a fancy sweater something like the one Ivy had, only Ivy did not look quite like this in it. A very flashy number, all dressed up for a date welcoming Ben Forbes in.

  Ernie’s face became curiously cold and hard.

  He verified the number of the apartment and then returned to the foyer. He wrote down the two names that appeared on the card above the mailbox for D-3, Mary Catherine Brewer and Lorene Guthrie. He placed the names in his wallet and walked back to his car.

  For the second time that night he sat in it, thinking.

  This is Ben, he told himself. Remember? You’ve known him all your life and he’s never been a chaser. Certainly not now of all times, with Carolyn missing. There could be a lot of reasons why he would have to come running to see this doll.

  Name one. And explain why he acted so guilty about it.

  Explain why he lied.

  No immediate answer came except the obvious one, and that was the one Ernie didn’t want. A cop should not have friends, he thought. It makes things tougher. If this were just anybody, you would put the evidence together without passion and consider it in the same way. But this is Ben. You have a picture of Ben as you have observed him over the years and you know that this action does not fit the picture. You know that Ben would not do what you have just seen him do.

  You do not want him to have done it. Because you like Ben and it is a hard thing to find out that someone you like is a louse.

  Because you have a mind trained in the ways of suspicion, taught to believe the worst, and one thought never comes alone but brings a whole long line of others with it.

  No. Knock it off. Let it rest. A tired man shouldn’t try to think.

  All you really know at this point is that Ben has done something you don’t understand.

  There was no point in hanging around any longer. Ernie drove home.

  Ivy had a steak for him. While she broiled it he took off his shoes and had a beer. He was still able to see most of the fight. It was one of the off-Garden nights and the pickup was from one of the midwestern arenas. The main go featured middleweights, one of them a pretty fair boxer of the club-fighter type who always turned in a good clean performance. The other was a local boy hailed enthusiastically as a rapidly rising star. As far as Ernie could see this boy had never heard of boxing except as something you did to packages. All he could do was wrestle, butt, crowd, hold, and keep up a clumsy flailing like a woman beating rugs. But he was inexhaustible and he had a head made of cast iron. The boxer couldn’t seem to get going. It made Ernie mad. “Come on,” he kept telling the boxer, “get off the dime. You can take this clown.”

  Ivy put the steak in front of him. “I don’t see why you watch the fights if they make you angry.”

  “I like fights,” Ernie said, “when they are fights. This is a mess.”

  The boxer lost. Ernie felt restless and dissatisfied. The wrong man won
, but what were you going to do about it?

  “For pity’s sake,” said Ivy, “what’s wrong with you?” She leaned over and kissed him. “Real hard day, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He put his arm around her. She was one of these cute round-eyed cheerful girls, and Ernie always marveled that she could stay cheerful year after year with all she had to put up with, including two kids.

  “I stopped by Ben’s house,” he said. “I couldn’t get him to come.”

  “Poor Ben. I should think he’d be about crazy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s still no sign of her?”

  “No.”

  “Poor Carolyn. You wonder what on earth could have happened to her. It’s so strange.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just vanishing like that. As though the ground had swallowed her.”

  Ernie sprang up. “Now why the hell would you want to say a thing like that?”

  “It’s just a saying.” She stared at him, hurt. “I know you’re tired, but I don’t see it’s any reason to snap at me.”

  “I’m sorry. Let’s drop it, huh? How about another beer?”

  They watched the eleven-o’clock news, and then Ernie began to twirl the dial. He got scraps of old movies on three other channels and he and Ivy played their customary game of identifying the movies almost at the first flick of the switch. Some of them had been showing on the local stations for four or five years. Finally he asked Ivy if she had had enough and she said she had. He turned off the set, turned down the furnace, and checked the doors. Ivy saw that all was well in the kids’ room. They went to bed.

  Ivy snuggled in his arms and was asleep in two minutes. Ernie should have been. He was dog-tired. But he kept thinking of things.

  As though the ground had swallowed her.

  Just an old saying. But he wished Ivy hadn’t used it.

  Counting Tuesday, Carolyn had now been missing for four days without a trace. She had taken nothing with her. There had been no sign of violence. If she had wandered away from the house on foot, someone almost certainly would have seen her.

  It looked as though she had gone off with someone she knew and trusted, expecting that she would be coming right back.

  Only she never had.

  ten

  On Saturday morning Ben Forbes called Mary Catherine Brewer at Blackstone’s, the department store where she and Lorene worked, before he left the house. If he called from his office Grace Vitelli would inevitably know it and he did not want her to.

  Miss Brewer had a slightly hard, matter-of-fact voice that he liked.

  “Lorene asked me about that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I tucked that number away somewhere. She said she didn’t want it, but I hated to take the responsibility of destroying it. You know how it is. I didn’t have any time this morning, but I’ll take a look tonight. Could I call you—”

  “Miss Brewer, how about your lunch hour?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll run you out and bring you back again. I’ll even buy you the best lunch in town. It wouldn’t take you very long to find the number, would it?”

  “I don’t suppose so. But—”

  “Look, I know you have a job to worry about. I promise to get you back on time. It’s very important to me.”

  “It must be,” she said, and then rather reluctantly she added, “Okay. I get off at twelve-thirty.”

  “Where shall I pick you up?”

  “The employees’ entrance on the back street. They’re particular about that.”

  He said he would be there. Then he drove into town. He was late getting to the office. Grace Vitelli greeted him with the gentle concern she had developed since Tuesday night. She asked if he had heard anything and he said that he had not. She shook her head and went immediately into a recital of the business calls that had come in.

  He cut her short. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves, Grace. I’m not worth a damn and it isn’t fair to my clients. I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  She looked at him, her face strained with pity, but she could not deny the truth of what he said.

  “I’m going to close the office until—this is over. Postpone what we can, give the rest around to Braden or Wolff or whoever can take it. Consider this a vacation ahead of time. I’ll give you a month in advance, how’s that?”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. But he knew what was in the back of her mind. Doubt and a question. Once the normal pattern is disrupted it almost never settles back again exactly as it was. There is nearly always some degree of permanent change. Grace had no idea how great that change was likely to be, but she must be thinking about her job. He did not want her to be cheated.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get busy.”

  At twelve-fifteen they were still calling clients and other law offices, making arrangements. He left Grace to finish it and close the office.

  “I won’t be back,” he said.

  He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. “I’ll see that everything is taken care of. And, Mr. Forbes, promise me you’ll let me know the minute you hear anything. And if there’s anything I can do, anything at all—”

  “Thanks, Grace. I will. Have a good time.”

  He shut the office door behind him and walked out of the building and it was as though in doing so he walked out of his whole life and all that had gone into the making of it. He entered, a stranger, into a new land.

  He drove the two blocks to Blackstone’s and found the employees’ entrance and waited.

  At twelve-thirty a bunch of people, mostly women and girls, came out of the door, buttoning their coats and tying scarfs over their heads, laughing and chattering back and forth. Ben got out and stood by the car. Then he saw Lorene. She had another girl with her, a tall slim dark one with hair cut fashionably short, an attractive but not pretty face, and an air of good-natured competence.

  Lorene brought her over and introduced her. Then she said anxiously:

  “You’re real sure there’s nothing wrong, now?”

  “I told you there wasn’t.”

  “I know, but Vern wanted to know why you were there last night, and I told him, and he said it sounded funny to him. He got kind of upset about it. Of course he just hates the sound of Al’s name—”

  “The divorce,” Ben said steadily, “is perfectly okay.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Lorene said. “I just don’t know what we’d do if anything was to happen now. We’re planning to get married just as soon as it’s final, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Ben, “I figured that.”

  And so had Al Guthrie. She’s too beautiful, he had said. Some other guy will take her and paw all over what belonged to me and I won’t have that. I’ll kill her before I let some bastard have her.

  “Time’s wasting,” said Mary Catherine, looking at her watch.

  Ben held the car door for her. Lorene said, “Well, ’bye, and I’ll tell Vern what you said. I’m meeting him for lunch.”

  She walked away. Ben went around the car to the driver’s side and got in. Mary Catherine looked after Lorene and smiled.

  “That’s sure a pair of lovebirds,” she said. “They both act like they invented it. Lunch every day, dinner every night, phone calls—yi! I’ll be glad when they get married.”

  Ben pulled out of the side street and drove as fast as he could through traffic, east on Market Street.

  “Kratich seems like a decent chap,” he said.

  “Oh yes. Not my cup of tea, but he’s okay and he’s sure crazy about Lorene. But you wonder. I guess Lorene just goes for older men. Al was a lot older too, wasn’t he?”

  “Seven or eight years. Not too much.”

  “But she was only a kid in her teens then. It makes a difference.”

  “I suppose so,” Ben said. I’ve got to get something for my nerves, he thought. Look at my hands. And I’ve had a pain in my stomach since Tuesday that won’t
go away.

  “I guess Lorene had a pretty hard time of it at home, though,” Mary Catherine said. “Eight other kids and no money in a country town. I guess Al looked pretty good to her. Better than working in the dairy store and giving all the money to her old man. She said that’s why she kept going back to him in spite of everything. But you’ve heard the story, of course.”

  Ben turned down Norland Avenue. “Her family figured they got rid of her and weren’t happy to have her back. Yes, I heard the story. I think it worked both ways. I think Lorene didn’t like it either.”

  He spun around the corner and pulled up in front of the apartment house. “There, that didn’t take long, did it?”

  She looked at him rather oddly, but all she said was, “No.” They went up to the apartment.

  She took her coat off and told him to sit down. There was a small desk in the corner with the phone on it. She began to go through the drawers.

  “What exactly did Al say to you?” Ben asked.

  “That made me sore,” she said. “I did think Lorene ought to tend to her own business. But she made such a fuss about it—”

  “What did he say?”

  Again she gave him that odd look. “He called three times. Or at least that’s how often I answered. Lorene wouldn’t go near the phone except for Vern, and they had this code worked out. He’d ring three times and hang up, then ring again. You know. Well, actually I was surprised. I thought this Al would be a rough customer from all I’d heard, but he was real polite to me. Practically begged me to get Lorene to talk to him. I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He really did seem to be taking it hard.”

  “He didn’t tell you where he was living?”

  “No, he only gave me the number, and where the devil did I put it? I could have sworn—”

  “So he only asked you to have Lorene call him. Is that all?”

  “Just about. The last time he said he wouldn’t call again but he still hoped to hear from her. He said he’d be at that number for one more week. After that he would have to make other plans.”