by Ed McBain
They weren’t Sam’s arms; they were Mark’s, and he was suddenly behind me, pulling me away. Sam leaped away from the stove and tossed his big fist at my throat, with Mark holding my arms behind me.
I turned my head, caught the blow on the side of my neck.
“What the hell!” I bellowed. “Let me loose, you son of a …”
Mark lifted me off my feet and swung me around away from Sam. He stepped between the two of us and said, “Okay, boys, it’s all over now.”
Jerry bounced into the tent, his face pale.
“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus.”
Fred was right behind him. “What happened?” he asked. “What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” Mark said calmly. He was standing between Sam and me, his face smeared with lipstick, an air of quiet strength about him.
Sam tossed a vicious look in my direction and then stalked out of the tent. I walked over to Lois and put my arm around her. The poor kid was still trembling.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her voice was small, shaky.
We waited inside the tent until the crowd cleared, then started down toward the outboard. Behind us, I heard someone say, “Just a little misunderstanding, that’s all.” Fred’s voice was clear as it carried down to us. “Maybe Sam saw that little episode by the fire.”
I glanced apprehensively at Lois, but she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to hear anything that was being said.
“Some party,” I heard Jerry complain. “Who was that big lug, anyway?”
We passed a blur of shadows off in the darkness of the trees, and I heard a voice I recognized as Mark’s whisper something. I peered into the blackness, turning away in embarrassment when I saw Mark with a girl in his arms, his lips against her throat. Her hair looked blond for a moment, and I wondered how it could have changed so suddenly from red. I was turning for another look when Lois asked, “Are you coming?”
“Sure, sure.”
We got down to the waterfront and stepped into the outboard. I started her up, Lois sitting hunched in the bow, her eyes on her feet. Overhead, the stars swung in a wide arc, sprinkling their brilliance across the blackness. It had gotten very chilly suddenly, and I lifted my sweater high on the back of my neck, trying to get whatever warmth I could from it.
In the bow, Lois sat silent.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When we reached Little Harbor, I tied up the outboard at my dock and helped Lois out.
“Come on,” I said, “I’ll get you something to drink.”
She nodded noiselessly and followed me up the path to my cabin. She waited outside while I lighted the kerosene lantern, then stepped into the room, standing just inside the door.
I opened the end-table drawer and began rummaging around for the bottle. “Sit down,” I called over my shoulder.
She walked to the bed and sat on the edge, her knees close together. I poured a healthy shot into the plastic cup and brought it to her. She cupped it in both hands and began sipping at it, looking down into the cup.
“Lower the canvasses, will you?” she said pettishly.
I agreed and walked outside. I sighed deeply as I loosened the straps on the canvas that rolled down over one side of the cabin. If there was anything I didn’t like it was a woman in silent fury. Hell, I was the guy who helped her; why take it out on me? I lowered the canvas on the other side of the cabin and walked back inside. She was still sitting on the bed, still sipping from the cup.
“Want to tell me about it?” I asked.
She shrugged and drank the rest of the whiskey in the cup. A little color was beginning to come back into her face.
“I’m a pretty good listener,” I offered.
“Sure you’re not another bastard like Sam?”
It was my turn to shrug.
She shook her head in self-censure. “I’m sorry, Steve. A guy like that makes you wonder about all men.” She paused, looked over at the flickering lantern on the end table. “Sometimes I hate the whole lot of you.”
I don’t know what triggered in my mind, but I heard myself ask, “Did you hate Johnny?”
She looked up and pulled a face. “For God’s sake, is he your brother or something?”
“I just wondered.”
“You do an awful lot of wondering about him.” She pulled another face and said, “No, I didn’t hate him. He’s a man, that’s all. Just another man.”
“Like me?”
“Yes, dammit, like you.” She bit her lips instantly and said, “I didn’t mean that, Steve. You know I didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said. “What about Sam?”
“You saw.”
“I only caught the end of the show.”
“Don’t joke about it,” she flared.
“Sorry. What happened?”
“I went up for a beer. I told you I was going, remember?”
“Yes. Sam left shortly after you did.”
“Why didn’t you come after him?” she asked. There was the indignant look of a neglected woman in her eyes. Her tone plainly implied that she was my woman and I should have taken better care of her.
“I didn’t know where he was going,” I said honestly. I didn’t tell her that her sister had kissed me at that moment. I didn’t mention that.
“I was drinking beer,” Lois said, snapping my thoughts back to her. “I was standing near the keg drinking beer. I was really feeling good, Steve. I like beer, I really do.”
I nodded and waited for her to go on.
“He came into the tent and didn’t say a word. He walked straight to the keg and tapped himself a glass. When I saw he was going to drink it in the tent, I started to leave. He blocked my way.”
She ran a nervous hand through her hair. “Do I have to tell this, Steve? I hate that bastard. God, how I hate him.”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Give me another drink.”
I poured a small shot for her and held the bottle up to the lantern, trying to remember if I’d brought more with me.
She sipped a little and said, “I told him to get the hell out of my way and he pushed me back. He … he touched me.”
She must have seen the incredulous look that flitted over my face. At any rate, she explained immediately.
“Oh, I’ve been touched before, God knows I’ve been touched. But … you don’t know how I felt then, Steve. You can’t know. It was like … like being soiled. As if his hand on my breast …”
She shook her head, as though she were trying to clear it of an unpleasant memory.
“It was like being dirtied, do you understand?”
I nodded. “Go on,” I said.
“There’s not much more. I didn’t say a word to him. I just backed away, broke the glass on the edge of the table and started for the door. He reached for me again and that’s when I screamed.”
She stopped talking and a silence sifted into the cabin. The lantern flicked our shadows onto the walls. Quickly, she lifted the cup and drank the whiskey, gasping as it went down.
“You should have killed him,” she said softly. “You should have killed the bastard.”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes. At last, she said, “I feel better.”
“Just forget about him,” I advised.
She shook her head unbelievingly. “I’ll never understand it, never in a million years. How could Jean have married him? How can she go to bed with him? Those fingers … God!”
“Fowler and Fowler,” I said unconsciously, thinking how nice it must have been for a girl to land a plum like Sam Fowler.
Lois nodded knowingly. “She always wanted money,” she said. “But how low can you get? I can think of prouder professions.” She grinned, and she seemed happy for the first time since we’d entered the cabin. “Wouldn’t you rather be a prostitute than Sam Fowler’s wife?”
“I’m afraid I’d be a little incapacitated at both,” I answered.
“Money,” she said. “What some people won’t do for money.” She shook her head again, then asked, “Got a cigarette, Steve?”
I pulled a pack from the pocket of my dungarees and shook one loose for her, leaning over to light it. She blew out a stream of smoke and murmured, “Thanks.”
“Feel good enough to go back now?” I asked.
“I’m staying here tonight,” she said flatly.
A flame of excitement licked at me, and then I remembered her sister and her possible reaction to such a situation.
“I think you’d better …”
“In fact,” she reconsidered, “I’ll be here from now on. I don’t want to be anywhere near that filth on Site One.”
“What about your sister?” I asked.
“She’ll have to call out the National Guard to get me back over there.” She paused and turned to look at me, her eyes serious. “Whether you like it or not, honey, you’re stuck with me.”
I thought this over for a few seconds. “I like it,” I said.
“Fine.”
She fell back on the bed then and pulled me down beside her, her lips reaching for mine. I held her close, my hands cupping her face, my lips closing over hers. I released her, lifted the chimney on the lantern and blew out the flame.
“Steve,” she whispered, “I want to forget that bastard.”
“Sure, honey,” I said. “Sure.”
That was the beginning. Jean didn’t interrupt us. No one did. She was beautiful and wild, like an untamed animal, with flowing black hair that was silk to the touch, with eyes that tempted and yearned.
There’s a joke Mike tells. He told it for the first time sitting at his drawing board in our big two-room agency.
The joke is about a guy who’s tired of his sickly wife. He goes to a doctor friend and asks how he can legitimately get rid of his wife. You see, he can’t stand her any longer. The doctor considers the problem and tells his friend to take his wife to bed every chance he gets. She’s a sickly woman, you understand, and she won’t be able to stand the constant strain of such excitement. At the end of a year, the doctor promises, the wife will be dead.
The guy goes at it, hard and strong, and 364 days later the doctor happens to pass by the house. He sees the wife playing tennis on the lawn, laughing happily, slashing at the ball.
Sitting in a wheelchair, shriveled and emaciated is the husband.
The husband nods his head wisely at his wife and cackles, “Laugh, you bitch. You’ve only got a day more to live.”
The first time Mike told that joke, I thought I’d split a gut laughing.
After three days of Lois, I didn’t think it was funny any more.
This was the horn of plenty overflowing. This was Lois, and I learned more about women from her in three days than I’d learned in all my twenty-seven years.
It sounds funny. It’s a thing to laugh at, I know, like Mike’s joke. It would have been funny, too, if it hadn’t been so goddamned tragic. She was all woman, down to her toes, up to the roots of her jet hair. It was a career with her.
In the afternoons, right after lunch, she would go for a walk in the woods. She did it every day, religiously, and I began to look forward to those long walks. I would lie stretched out on the bed then, relaxing, thinking of Lois and the strange mixture of emotions she was. Sam had tagged her all right, had tagged her beautifully with his nickname, but he’d missed the other side of her. Beneath her wild, passionate nature there was the hauntingly tender appeal of a child.
I would lie and think about her, trying to figure her out, and during those times my mind would inadvertently shift to the contrast that was her sister. The close-cropped golden hair. The icy blue eyes. The aloofness in her walk, the queenly stature, the soft voice. And the kiss that had tiptoed across my cheek that night of the party.
Frantically, I tried to find a way out of the situation. And the more I figured, the more there was of Lois. More and more, I began to find my mind easing back to the thought of Jean, and I wondered what had provoked that kiss by the fire.
Lois went for her walk as usual on the fourth day. We had just finished lunch, and I was still weary from her demands of the morning. During lunch, I’d found myself looking over at Site One, hoping for a glimpse of Jean.
“I’m off, darling,” Lois said, rising from the table in front of the cooktent. She was wearing shorts and a halter, an outfit that would have interested me several days back.
Now, as she walked into the woods, I sighed deeply and opened the door to the cooktent, carrying a beer bottle in my left hand.
The memory came back with the speed of a lightning bolt. It slammed into my senses, and I almost backed out of the tent.
Clearly outlined, as real as I was, Johnny lay on the floor of my cooktent, the blood oozing out of his back, the ice pick at a crooked angle.
I blinked my eyes shut and opened them quickly.
The vision was gone. The cooktent floor was clean. I put the beer bottle down on the table and leaned against the door.
Retribution, I thought. Your memory’s coming back to haunt you. While you’re rolling in the hay with pretty little Hot Pants, a murderer is running around loose.
So what the hell do you care, another part of my mind asked? What business is it of yours?
Sure, I agreed. What the hell, this is my vacation.
I remembered once in the Army when I’d stopped a guy who was beating up a little shrimp with glasses. That had been none of my business either. Except that the little guy’s glasses were hanging like a shattered dream across the bridge of his nose, and shards were stuck in his cheeks, and he was bleeding like a stuck pig. And the big bastard kept hitting him.
But it was none of your business, the other part of my mind said.
And somewhere from deep inside me, like a goddamn righteous judge in a cold courtroom, some jackass mumbled, Murder Is Everybody’s Business.
Hooray, I thought, the big copywriter has come up with a sure-fire slogan. Murder Is Everybody’s Business. Great! Print it in caps, in red, and put a picture of Johnny under it, and don’t forget the ice pick.
I suddenly felt nauseous, sick of Lois, sick of myself, sick of the whole stinking mess. My stomach churned as I headed out of the cooktent and toward the outhouse in the woods.
I ran up the path, sicker now, threw open the narrow door and let all the sickness come out of me.
With my hand braced against the back wall, I hung my head over the holed wooden plank and let everything come out of me: the whiskey, the beer, the revulsion, the fear—everything.
And I felt better when it was all over. There was a lousy taste in my mouth and a terrible smell in my nostrils, but I felt better. I cleared my throat and reached for the can of lye on the wooden floor. I pried open the lid and started to shake a little of the white powder into the john. When nothing came out of the can, I figured it had caked inside as it so often did. I was surprised to find the can practically empty. I shook the few remaining particles out and then threw the can after them.
Stepping out into the air again, I breathed deeply of the forest, washed the smell of my own sickness out of my nostrils. I felt a whole lot better. I’d let it go a long time, playing with the idea that perhaps I had been drunk the morning I’d seen Johnny. But you can’t let something like that go, not if you’re made the way I am.
You just can’t pretend a guy is still alive when you know damn well he’s dead.
I walked straight down to the dock and hopped into the outboard. I remembered Lois then, climbed out of the boat, and went back to my cabin. I rummaged around in my suitcase for the butt end of a pencil and a piece of paper.
Quickly, I wrote:
LOIS. WENT TO GLEN. BE RIGHT BACK.
I signed my name hurriedly, threw the pencil into the suitcase, and started down toward the boat again. Outside the cooktent, I picked up a large stone, placed the paper on the table, and put the stone on top of it. I looked back at it once, and then hurried dow
n to the boat.
There was one sure way to check on Johnny, and I should have done it long ago. I steered the boat toward Glen, anxious to get this over with.
When I got there, I eased the boat into the dock, threw a line over, and started looking for a phone.
I walked over to the commissary and waited while a fat woman with a nasty brat haggled over several lamb chops. When the meat was finally wrapped, I caught the proprietor’s attention.
“Is there a phone anywhere?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. He was a tall man, and he wore a green eyeshade. His sleeves were rolled up to reveal thin arms covered with light blond hair. His eyes were pale blue, lost in the shadow of green that fell over his face from the eyeshade.
“Where is it?” I asked impatiently.
He started stacking gum behind the counter, neatly, in precise rows. I thought for a second he hadn’t caught what I said.
“Where is it?” I repeated.
“I heard you,” he said. “No need to shout.”
“Well, where is it then?”
“Everybody in a rush, always in a rush. Even when you’re on vacations. All the same. Rush, rush, rush.”
“Look, pal, all I want is …”
“I know, a telephone. Well you can just wait a minute, by golly.”
I waited a minute while he finished stacking the gum. He stepped back to admire his handiwork, and I felt like knocking all the little rows down onto the floor.
“Now,” he said, “what was it you wanted to know?”
“A phone,” I said patiently. “Where?”
“In the post office. Right over there.” He pointed with a long thin finger, and I walked off without thanking him.
There was one booth in the post office, and it was packed solid with about two hundred pounds of churning flesh.
“Hello, Mama?” the flesh began, her breasts quivering against the walls of the booth.
I sighed deeply and glanced at the big clock on the wall. Patiently, I lighted a cigarette and tried not to listen while she kept telling Mama how wonderful Lake George was. I was ready to grind out the butt when she stepped out of the booth.