Color Him Dead

by Charles Runyon

  She spoke around the cigarette: “See if I missed anything. I’ve got water-skis, ski-belt, rope, beachcoat, rope sandals, a beach blanket, rubber mattress, picnic basket, cooler, some swimsuits, towel, shorts and stuff, luggage—”

  “Why luggage?”

  “We have a hotel there, didn’t you know? I thought a shot of myself going into the hotel, checking in with luggage from Nisstensson and Sons Department Store—”

  “What exposure should I use?” The skin on the back of his neck was drawing tight.

  “Don’t you know?” She glanced over, frowning. “Oh, you’re kidding … aren’t you? Or are you annoyed?”

  “I just want complete instructions.”

  “I see. You’re the photographer and I should keep my ideas to myself. I’m sorry.”

  Her apology made him feel helplessly angry. She said it without contriteness, as though the word itself contained some sort of magic which automatically erased ill will. And at once she went on as though nothing had happened. “Are you a good photographer?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You’re modest. Barr said you were once a staff photographer for Life.”

  Drew sighed. “Years ago I happened to be nearby with a camera when a tornado lifted a house off its foundations. They printed it in Life, and in Barr Massu’s jazzed-up world, that makes me a staff photographer for Life.”

  “But you are a photographer?”

  “Let’s say I’m Barr’s photographer. I’m also his copywriter, layout man and illustrator. We run an economy operation. Barr gets the accounts, I do the work, and our typist does the modeling.” He saw that she was frowning, chewing her lip. He knew she was displeased, but today he didn’t care. “You want to go back, get a pro? You’re paying the bills—or your husband is.”

  At that moment she twisted the wheel and sent the big Lincoln into a heeling, squealing turn. He jammed his feet against the floorboards and opened his mouth to say he’d walk back. Then he saw an arrow pointing up a lane of asphalt: lake tarara 3 miles.

  She turned up the road and waved a hand at the sign. “We’ll make that name as well-known as Banff or Acapulco, or—”

  “Devil’s Island,” he said, settling back. Though he was still on the job, it appeared that she hadn’t gotten his message.

  She gave him a curious glance. “But really, don’t you think we could do something with the name?”

  “Change it. Sounds like something the marines took back in 1945.”

  She flushed. “I’m the one who named it.”

  “Then you’re the one who can change it.”

  Without warning she hit the brake, throwing him forward against the dash. Weeds screeched against the fenders as the car came to a stop at the side of the road. She turned to him with her hands folded on the wheel. “You’re trying to bug me, Simmons. Why? Because you wanted to use that typist of yours?”

  Drew studied the hands on the wheel; they were slim, long-fingered and large at the knuckles. They looked strong. “Call it temperament, Mrs. Nisstensson. I just don’t think I can work with you.”

  “Is she prettier than I?”

  Drew shook his head. “That isn’t the problem.”

  “You think she’s got a better shape?”

  Before he could answer, she reached down and pulled back the hem of her checkered skirt. It happened too fast. Drew would have preferred to gaze in quiet, meditative contemplation, but she allowed him only a glimpse, quicker than the flash of a strobe light, then drew the curtain of her skirt once again over her legs. Drew was left with a burning memory of two well-formed knees, one on each side of the steering post, widening out to thighs glossy within a tight casing of nylon—

  “Well, has she?”

  “There’s—” he cleared his throat. “There’s more—”

  “Must you see it all?”

  His face flamed hot, and her words made his blood surge with a wild, pulsing excitement. He no longer thought of what he had already seen, but of what he had not seen.

  To his self-disgust, he had to clear his throat again before speaking. “I started to say, there’s more to a model than a pretty face and a good body. Marianne has learned how I work. She does what I tell her.”

  “Oh, that.” Laughing, Edith steered the car back onto the asphalt. “I can handle that, Mr. Simmons. I’ll be putty in your hands, wait and see.”

  But she wasn’t, at the beginning. Their work turned into a restrained conflict with tacitly observed ground rules: photographic angles and poses were his domain. What product to display or how to display it, she regarded as her realm, and always she closed the subject by suggesting that he call her husband and get his opinion. Drew felt she was taking an unfair advantage, so he retaliated in the only way open to him.

  As she posed registering, he said: “All right, bellhop, smile at her as you take the bag. Mrs. Nisstensson, don’t stare at the bag like you’re afraid he’ll swipe it. Not at the ceiling either. Just turn slightly, this way, there. Now, wait until they move that ladder out of the background—”

  He kept her jumping from pose to pose, holding still until her muscles trembled, changing clothes until her skin must have been raw. Shorts for a picture outside one of the pool cabanas, change to afternoon dress for a drink on the terrace, change to green backless swimsuit for a shot on the beach.

  “Play ball with one of the boatmen, there’s one. What’s your name? Jack? This is Mrs.—You know her? Okay, toss the ball, don’t keep turning around, all I want is your manly back. Smile, Mrs. Nisstensson, you’re supposed to be having fun. Okay, change for the skiing pix, that’s three shots in that suit—”

  The hotel wasn’t yet finished. They were still painting murals in the bar; they were dragging in poplar trees with their boles wrapped in brown paper and setting them in huge holes. The pool wasn’t filled, and the diving board hung out over empty space.

  “—No, Edith, I’m not going to risk posing you on the end of the board. Look, let me set up the shots, huh? Start climbing the ladder. Don’t look at me, keep climbing, now come down and try it again. You’re dry as a bone. Let him wet you down with that hose. Sorry, I didn’t know it was that cold. Now we’ll have to wait until the goose pimples go away—”

  But conflict itself leads to a certain intimacy, and gradually the tension eased. In the brief pauses between shots, while he changed film and held the light meter to her face, they exchanged the superficial details of their lives. He learned that she was only twenty, that her husband was sixty-four. He noted that she filled her swimsuit beautifully, naked thighs gleaming wet, wide smooth back dewed with moisture. During a high-angle shot from the top of the ladder, he discovered that the breasts were not Maidenform, only Edith, and he came to consider her in that way a man has of considering any reasonably desirable woman with whom he comes in contact, projecting her compliant image onto a clean white sheet.

  One restraining element was the manager, a small, dark-haired young man named Krock who shadowed Edith with a hopeless, haunted look in his eyes. Edith treated the man with a cool, studied formality which suggested to Drew an affair now dormant, an affair not too pleasant, and one in which Edith had retained the upper hand, perhaps through control of her husband’s purse strings. Drew had a feeling that this was a trap worth avoiding.

  And during a late-afternoon lunch, when both were drawn and haggard with fatigue, Edith displayed one of her least pleasant features. The dining room wasn’t finished, they didn’t have the steam table up, and there were no customers. And that was fortunate, because Edith required the entire kitchen staff to serve her.

  “—Throw the asparagus out. It’s stringy. Take the potatoes back and give me some without parsley. Don’t just take the parsley off, it leaves a taste. Give me fresh potatoes. This steak is bleeding all over my plate. Put it back on the fire. Oh, now you’ve fried all the juice out. Try again. My God, what if I were a guest? Boy, bring me a bottle of good wine. I said good wine. I use this California
stuff to wash my car—”

  Drew’s food formed an undigested lump in his stomach, and finally he said: “You aren’t used to having money, are you?”

  He knew he’d pricked a sore spot. There was a tightening of skin across her cheekbones, a flattening of her eyes. “Why do you say that?”

  “You aren’t cool with the help. You overplay the autocratic scene, as if you’re afraid they’ll treat you as an equal.”

  Carefully she lay her fork on the table. “In a way you’re right, Drew. I grew up on a sandhill farm in the Nebraska panhandle. My dad was a retired railroader trying to raise five kids on a pension check. When I was fourteen he gave up, shoved a shotgun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I left home the same day. Two years later I married Nils. He’s worth a million dollars and he gives me everything I want. This lake—” she waved her arm—“is mine. I can do what I want with it.”

  “Is it in your name?”

  In the few seconds before her eyes dropped, the play of emotion across her face was as revealing as a suddenly illuminated screen. Here was a girl who had married wealth expecting to find the end of her troubles, only to discover that the nagging feeling of insecurity didn’t go away. Now the answer had been dropped into her lap; the money wasn’t really hers.

  She looked down and twirled her glass silently for a minute. She spoke without looking up, her voice uncharacteristically low and hesitant. “May I make a suggestion?”

  “You’ve been making them all day. Shoot.”

  “Let’s go over to Honeymoon Beach with the picnic basket. Get some boy-girl scenes.”

  She asked in a way that made it impossible for Drew to say no, even though warning bells jangled in his mind. Honeymoon Beach was a quarter-mile across the lake, tucked under a twenty-foot cliff. They’d hauled in white sand and put up a little shack which would hold a refreshment stand and bathroom. Drew put on swim trunks, set the self-timer on his camera, and got some shots of Edith and himself sitting on the blanket. Then opening the lunch basket. Then strolling down the beach hand in hand. (Her palm was a hard pad of flesh, but smooth as chamois. Her skin had a clean fresh-water smell, her breath held a touch of her after-dinner wine. Every cell in his body was tense with awareness that they were alone on this tiny beach, that the hotel was a quarter-mile across the water, and that she had been strangely quiet and pliant since lunch.

  The sun grew low, sending a pale yellow light across the water. “I can’t shoot anything in this light.”

  “How terrible.” She dropped to the blanket and rolled over on her back. Her eyes looked sleepy; inside the green bathing suit, her breasts were twin cones pointing at the red sky; her legs were slightly open, and the sun gleamed gold on a few hairs high on her thighs. “I had the bartender fill our jug with martinis,” she said.

  He sat beside her, lifted out the jug, and filled the plastic cup. “We’ll have to drink out of the same cup.”

  “My lips are pure. But you drink first.”

  He took a drink and felt the warmth spread within him. He gave her the cup and she half-raised to drink; he put his hand under her head and spread his fingers. The nape of her neck was warm and covered with soft down. He took the cup and set it aside, then bent to kiss her. He felt her hands on his back; her lips were soft; her breath tasted of martini, but the clean fresh smell was still there. He felt her muscular tongue dart between his lips, and he knew he’d find no resistance. He slid his hand up her leg and found the hard, elastic cloth of her swimsuit. He tried to get his fingers under it, but she caught his wrist. Her lips moved against his: “You’re married.”

  “So are you,” he grunted.

  “With me it doesn’t make any difference. Can you say that?”

  Still her strong fingers held him away from the ultimate discovery. He drew away and saw a half-smile on her face. He saw that he’d read her mood correctly, but he hadn’t read far enough. First she wanted him to renounce his wife, just as she’d tried earlier to make him admit that she was more lovely, more shapely than Marianne. Edith was a girl hungry for reassurance, and he wasn’t that eager for what she offered.

  He sat up with his back to her. “No, I can’t say that it makes no difference that I’m married. I doubt if you can, either." “But I can, Drew. Listen, when I first got married I used to lie there and wait for him to come to bed. Five nights out of six he’d just poke his head through the door and say goodnight. Lord! I’d parade around with my clothes off, and he’d just smile wistfully and say, ‘You’re very lovely, Edith. I hope you’re happy.’ If I hinted that I wasn’t, why the next day there’d be a bracelet or a ring or a new coat. It got so bad I’d break out in a heat rash if I stood close to a man in an elevator. Finally I’d had it; one night after he’d gone to sleep I sneaked out and caught a taxi. I was nervous, nervous as hell. The driver was a young Italian, and I guess he’d seen women like me before. He made it easy—”

  “You like to talk about it, Edith?” he asked softly.

  She was silent a moment, and he heard the gurgle of the martini jug. A moment later he felt her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down as she pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to change.”

  He turned to watch her walk toward the little bath house. It looked raw and savage without paint. Her steps gradually slowed, until at the door she stopped and turned. “If you decide to come, bring the blanket.”

  As she closed the door, he felt his thought process smothered in a wild surge of excitement. Here was the offer, no strings attached. Just come, man, bring yourself, no need to renounce Carey, nothing. Hadn’t she told that story about the cab driver to show that there’d be no complications, no unpleasant aftermath? There would be a brief contact, nothing more; two people wanted something they couldn’t get alone, so they pooled their resources in a temporary alliance until the end had been achieved, then went their separate ways and no hard feelings….

  He had gotten up and walked stiffly to the bath house. As he turned the knob and pushed open the door, he’d felt only a slight stab of premonition, a feeling that he was stepping off into deep, deep water….

  Now they were lowering the casket. For a moment the eyes were off Drew, watching the descent of that ridiculously ornate box, with their minds plunged into thoughts of their own mortality.

  It was time….

  He gambled that Cornell and Fellini would not shoot into the crowd. He plunged into the thickest of the mass, smashed through, and was running free, down the hill toward the line of cars. The first shot ripped the air over his head with a sound like tearing tissue paper. The second slug made a starburst in the windshield of a parked car. He gambled that they wouldn’t shoot accurately downhill, and he won that gamble too. The guns barked above him like angry dogs as he ran behind the cars in a low gorilla’s crouch. A slug burned the paint off a fender in front of him, then made a long, disappointed whine out over the valley. They had his range now; he prayed that his third gamble would pay off. He knew he’d won when he found a car with the leather key case dangling from the dash, lovely as a diamond pendant. Still crouching, he opened the door, turned the key, pressed the dashboard starter, and jumped in as the engine roared. He squealed out, crouching low over the wheel. As he looked up at the mirror, he saw Fellini and Cornell ranged on top of the hill like rookie cops at target practice. That’s it boys, hold the guns the way the book says, straight from the shoulder with the body turned sideways, and never mind the part that says you can’t hit a bull’s ass with a scoop at twenty yards, let alone fifty …

  Now a hundred … two hundred….

  Here was the narrow one-way bridge, the bottleneck. Halfway across, Drew twisted the wheel and rammed the hood beneath one railing. He felt the rear bumper strike the other side. He threw the keys in the river and ran on. Now there was only the marshal, old Cash Macklehaney, leaving the intersection in a stiff-legged old man’s run. Drew shouted “Get him! Get him!” as he ran past, and the old man stopped and peered with bewildered, nea
rsighted eyes to see what Drew was chasing. Drew had jumped in the old man’s car and was roaring off when he heard the dull boom of a .44 Colt. He didn’t worry because he was a moving, going-away target, and old Mac’s gun hadn’t cleared leather in twenty years—

  The slug punched a hole in the door just behind the hinge, flattening as it did so and losing a good half of its muzzle velocity. It lost a little more passing through the car’s upholstery, but it still had enough foot-pounds of kinetic energy to blast an impact crater in the flesh above his left ankle, to break the two bones of his left leg, then glance off and smash a nerve and gouge out a vein before dropping to the rubber floor mat. The pain hit his leg like a block of ice dropped from a great height. Goddam, he told himself, this cools it for you, lad. But the car had an automatic shift, and so he thought: Screw the left leg, just grit your goddam teeth and keep that right foot on the floorboard, keep your eyes on that nude hood ornament, and keep those chromium tits pointed west. Keep your mind on that little cabin in the high pine forest. Don’t think about the pain that rakes your leg like fishhooks pulled upward, forget the blood that fills your shoe. You got a clear road ahead and nobody behind, and if you don’t make it now, you don’t deserve to live….

  ONE

  The jagged cinder of St. Patricia thrust up from a lonely sea, fifty miles from the touristed comfort of the Lesser Antilles. A string of semi-dormant volcanoes split the island like the spiked back of a prehistoric monster. Boiling thunderheads formed above them and marched down to the western sea, trailing streamers of rain into splintered ravines. On the steaming leeward slope, the frogs grew as big as capons, bamboo formed impenetrable thickets, and the night-hunting fer-de-lance ruled the bush beyond the glow of kerosene lamps. On the windward slope, trade winds swept through hexagon cactus and screwpine, combing and parting the shoulder-high citronella grass. To the north the island dwindled to a hundred rocky, wave-lashed fragments; to the south it joined the sea in a marsh inhabited by reptiles and foot-long centipedes.