Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

Martha nodded agreeably, looked up and saw Pádraig. “Hello. You remember Officer Scherer, don’t you, Pádraig? We were talking about horses.”

  Slowly the young Irishman nodded. “I think I knew that. It was either horses or your wife.”

  Scherer sputtered appreciatively, then remembered his wife and went sober. “I have to talk to you, Martha,” Pádraig said, nervously. Martha met his eye.

  The policeman excused himself with a word and a gesture and unfolded from the little chair. Pádraig took his place, and from the way he yanked his trousers up in sitting, he seemed to be prepared for a job of work.

  “What evidence do they have on him?” he whispered to Martha, who leaned over to catch his words.

  She looked even more pink and fragile as she answered. “He admits to being there, of course. It’s all a matter of whether what he did was excusable under law, or an outright crime.”

  Pádraig stiffened in place. He was grayish white and he mouthed words that might have been an invocation and might have been something else. “Excusable? How could it be excusable?” He shook his head and the silky black hair floated about. I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t believe he was even there. I will tell them better—”

  Martha sensed his mistake. “We’re not talking about George’s death, Pádraig. Don’t make that horrible error. Mayland’s arrested for assault only.”

  The child-face had no expression, but color returned to it. “Cén fáth?”

  “For beaning Don Stoughie, or shaking him, or whatever. Saturday morning.”

  Now Pádraig collapsed into the chair, until his wet back made noise slipping against the hard plastic. “Is that so?”

  Martha nodded. “Stoughie was trying to do us out, as expected, and since Mayland wasn’t feeling too well, he lost his temper.”

  Pádraig beat a rough hand against his knee, though whether the act was in irritation with Long or in sympathy with him, Martha had no clue. “It’s a bad time for them to be worrying about that, with George after dying.”

  Martha’s back did not quite touch the back of her chair. Her feet began once more to pendulum as she replied, “They think it was a bad time for him to lose his temper.”

  “It’s a bad time enough!” Pádraig’s voice was heated and just a bit too loud. The policeman at the desk looked up warily, as did a woman in muslin sitting at a word processor. Pádraig did not notice, for he was so slumped into his seat that the top of his sleek black head was all that was visible from the front. He hit his thigh with his hand once more, for good measure, and he gave a sigh that bounced his torso.

  “You’ll feel better if you sit up,” Martha said, hesitantly. Half-sullen, half-tolerant, he obliged her. “What can happen, if he is convicted of this beating?”

  Martha shrugged. “A fine, I hope. He looks so harmless, no judge could take the complaint too seriously.”

  Pádraig made a rough and disbelieving sound.

  For another few minutes they sat there, side by side, each busy with solitary thought, and then Martha glanced over once again. “Pádraig? What were you going to tell them, if they had arrested him for murder? About his not being at the place at all…?”

  Pádraig straightened again and made a grimace. “Not so. I was confused. I would have told them that I know this man could not kill a man. That I know it.”

  Martha sat in the embarrassed silence she always felt when someone told her what she knew to be a lie.

  The jail cell looked out to a four-lane street, with the multistory parking garage beyond. Not picturesque. Nor was the cell as comfy as the police station had seemed to promise. It was neat, the walls were freshly painted, and there was a W.C., but it was not a place to either rest or delight the spirit. Worst of all, in Long’s opinion, it was not wholly his.

  He had to share it with a very unappealing stripling with great blackheads all over his cheeks, who hadn’t said a word in response to Long’s greeting, nor had he met his companion’s eyes in the hour since forced to share the domicile.

  But that was just as well. Unlikely the boy’s conversation would be entertaining, and with the involvements of eye contact removed, Long felt free to examine the fellow. He sat on the edge of one bunk (better mattress than the motel. Solid) with one leg drawn up and his head moving almost imperceptibly from side to side in slow rhythm, and he stared at the boy all he liked.

  A runaway, Long surmised. From an institution, rather than a family perhaps. That particular brand of calm sullenness was rarely of home brew. Not a street thug or a gang member: he lacked the necessary rude dash. Long doubted also that he was a drug pusher, for who would buy anything to be put into the body from such a dirty fellow?

  He might have been a petty thief, of course. It was even possible (but not probable, Long qualified carefully) that he was an honest soul unjustly accused of something. Who had been unfairly goaded to violence upon someone richly deserving violence. Examining the boy’s eyes and nostrils closely, Long ascertained that he did not have a cold, so that particular very good excuse did not apply, but there were various sorts of torture in the world.

  Thought slid toward the personal. He reviewed his interview with Stoughie with real regret.

  He ought to have killed the fellow and disposed of the body. Out of a window, or into a suitcase. Better, a pair of suitcases. Thence into the ocean, like fishbait. Would the local fishermen accept indeterminate chunks of red meat? Lovely for rock cod. Surely the gulls would dispose of the offal.

  But Martha would disapprove very highly. She had considered a similar act of five years previous as philosophical error of the worst kind, albeit effective. And who knew but that Don Stoughie had an aged mother at home, whose sole support he was. Long, being Chinese, had a great respect for family.

  No matter, he had made his decision there by the agent’s desk, and had gone halfway in action. Now the consequences would wash over him. What goes around, comes around. Who said that? Dogen? Weird Teddy?

  Blue hell. Sometimes the game wasn’t worth the candle. It was all because he wasn’t a natural, Long knew. With human life, as with music, he hadn’t the intuitive grasp, and needed much study. Human life, however, was far less comprehensible and therefore more important to him than was music.

  With a thrill of fear and elation and horror he felt himself as what he was: an aging human man wearing clothes and sitting on a hard mattress under electric lights, waiting for others to decide his future. And with a terrible head cold. What awesome truth was concealed in that he did not know. But he wanted so much to know, that he began to tremble.

  Since he had been with Martha he had most certainly approached that knowledge. He had seen the footprints of the ox of enlightenment, at least. Sometimes, in the past four years, while talking with her or walking alone in Mendocino, he believed he had had visions of the animal itself. Not that Martha was in any sense oxlike…. But he found it a fragile understanding, and wiped away by confusion and the body’s pain. He wanted more. Right now, he wanted aspirin.

  He took out a Kleenex. He glanced once more at the unappealing youth, to find that one staring with unhealthy fascination at the center of Long’s body.

  Long recoiled, but the boy did not notice, for his gaze was impersonal, almost unfocused, and directed two feet down from Long’s head. It was hungry.

  Long felt the repulsion many people feel for snakes. He curled his knees to his chest. He turned away. Now he was facing the door of the cell, half glass and wire reinforced, like that in a grammar school. Peripherally he could see that the reptilian scrutiny continued. Very nervous-making.

  He forced his mind to constructive effort. Nothing would happen here until Mr. Alexander, the lawyer, arrived from Palo Alto. Then he would be let out on bail, unless Don Stoughie could convince them all he was a continuing danger to him. That was not likely. Long coughed into his Kleenex with a touch of self-pity.

  The very idea of pity reminded him of St Ives’s death, for Long, though he had no reason to li
ke the man, did feel sorry that he had been killed in that way. Ugly.

  There was little doubt in his mind that the death had been murder. From the little he had known of the piper, he had decided that although St. Ives was more than a bit cruel and dishonest in method, he was not a creature of wild moods. And a generally sour attitude does not lead to suicide, Long believed. St. Ives had taken drugs that day, and drugs could certainly affect the moods, but Long had never heard of suicide as a side effect of MDM, and he kept up with every major news weekly, as well as The New York Times.

  Fear, shame, despair, or ungovernable pain: those could lead to self-destruction. St. Ives didn’t seem governed by any of these. He was, however, governed by a need to cut at people, and he had given all five of them good reasons to want him dead in the eight weeks of the tour.

  Pádraig was the obvious one, goaded like an elephant with an ankh-man on his shoulder. Long smiled a slight, sweet smile at the thought of small, round-faced Pádraig (with hardly any nose) as an elephant. Though his ears did stick out. Had St. Ives tried to ride Long that way, he would not have survived the first week. Of course he would not have continued trying, after the first time… .

  Elen was almost as good a candidate, with her long brooding grudge against the man. Though Elen, also, would have done better to kill him early, before he revealed the history she found so distasteful. Dispassionately the dapper Mr. Long considered St. Ives’s appeal, or possible appeal, to women.

  He must have cut a better figure as a young man.

  Teddy Poznan seemed further out in the running. If he killed St. Ives for the cumulated insults dished out to him, then he had had a marvelous gift for concealing his irritation. What did the piper have as ammunition against Teddy? His dislike of the guitar, of course. His contempt for the counterculture. What else?

  Ted Poznan had supplied him with an illegal drug. A drug that made St. Ives very happy at least for a while. Did that, perhaps, cause an equal and opposite reaction, after the drug wore off?

  What was it St. Ives had said, under the influence of Adam: about being done with secrets? The piper had stored quite a trove of unlovely secrets. Long thought of one that he himself had shared with St. Ives and he grunted aloud, more certain than ever that St. Ives had not died by his own hand.

  Although he was only moderately sure that he himself was not the murderer (what with this cold and the lack of intuition and all), Mayland Long had no doubt that Martha was completely innocent of the affair. What she was and what she said went clear through. Simple and perfect. She had spent the night of the death watching over Marty. Poor Marty, who was doing such odd things. Long’s face grew grieved, for he had a long-standing fondness for children, especially little girls.

  Yes, Martha was accounted for, but the other three rooms… Not that there was anything especially incriminating about the musicians going out to “sport” (as Pádraig would put it) after a concert. They were young, unlike Martha and himself. But it made a pretty problem.

  Mayland Long had no qualms about casting any of his friends into the role of cold-blooded murderer. He would think no less of them for it. He might even, with mind and money, be able to help, but not while he was kept ignorant. And not while he was in jail.

  Martha was the only one in a position to find things out at the moment, and he had complete faith in her. Complacently Long considered Martha’s ability to find things out (things interior and exterior) as he gazed vaguely at the half-glass door, his hands folded in his lap. Given a little time, she would pick out the murderer.

  But wait. Murderers, by definition, were people that killed people. And Martha, he had reason to remember, was a breakable treasure, alone out there, but for her daughter.

  And Pádraig. And Elen. And Weird Teddy.

  Long sprang toward the door and pounded on it, calling quite forcefully for his lawyer.

  It didn’t look as though Sunday was going to be as warm as Saturday, and Martha, sitting on the bus-stop bench, grew a little chilled. Or maybe her thoughts were not pleasant, for she sat with her hands balled in her lap and occasionally she shivered. When this happened, the canary-yellow paper in her hands crackled and her wrapskirt (the only thing left that was clean) threatened to slide open.

  Though many of the shops were closed, there was enough going on to keep the mall busy in this fine summer weather. The jazz band had taken a break, but there was a cowboy singing in the doorway of Leask’s Department Store, playing on a plywood guitar. Three people, neither young nor old, passed, wearing army surplus. Their hair hung in the kind of dreadlocks that only great filth produces in those of Caucasian ancestry.

  She looked up to find a blue and white bus stopped before her. Though she had known this was a bus stop, she had not expected the arrival of a real bus, and gazed at the driver with such vacancy that he seemed on the verge of making his hydraulic suspension kneel for the old lady. She waved him on and the bus sighed and went, its rack of bicycles bobbing behind like a bustle.

  Martha was not sure her errand would bear fruit, nor that the produce would be edible even if it worked. She had been sitting on the wooden bench for a half hour, and it was now the middle of the afternoon. With George dead and Mayland in jail it seemed that active work of some kind must be called for, but she didn’t know what to do about George, and David Alexander was probably already getting her friend out on bail.

  Teddy had nothing to say, except “What goes around, comes around,” and that got no one any forrader. Please God that he didn’t do anything to set Elizabeth off. Just being Teddy was enough, really. (If only Elizabeth would forget family loyalty, take her daughter and drive home!)

  Pádraig was in his room alone. Theoretically asleep. He had lied to her.

  No word from Elen.

  Many pairs of feet passed behind her, until one pair stopped. She turned her head and shoulders, but instead of the man she sought, there stood a slight young black woman holding a dangly leotard and a wasp-waisted drum. Martha got up anyway.

  “The door,” she said to the woman. “It’s locked and I couldn’t get anyone to answer.”

  “Likely they can’t hear you, dear,” the dancer answered amiably. “Who’re you looking for?”

  “Don Stoughie.” Martha smiled her rosebud smile, which was answered by the other.

  “Him?” The single word was followed by a snort. “Well, I’ll let you in, but you mustn’t go assaulting him.”

  Martha just raised her eyebrows, so the woman added, “But then, you’re probably too young. It seems to be the really senior citizens who get that urge.” The dusty door opened and Martha heard jazz guitar coming down the dark staircase. A recording, she noted, but the floor thumps that accompanied it were live.

  Martha put on a sweet-little-old-lady voice and said, “No promises.” She followed the dancer up the stairs with an exaggerated stiff shuffle and turned left when the other turned right. The jazz guitar shut off as the young woman entered her studio.

  Stoughie’s door had a white-on-black plastic plate bearing his name, with a much more ornate brass sign below it that read REALTY. For a moment Martha read it as REALITY and wondered why such a sign should be so pretentious. Once she knew the subject was property, she understood.

  Light seeped under the door; she knocked on it.

  “Who’sere?” The words came out almost as one syllable. Martha mumbled.

  Silence. Scraping. He asked again, this time from right behind the door, and Martha’s mumble was more carefully indistinguishable, as well as a little querulous. He cracked open the door and she put her foot in it, having thought to come wearing heavy sandals. The hard sole rang when the door hit it.

  “Oh, don’t do that! I only want to talk to you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to you! When I do it will be in court!” He threw the door heavily at the jamb, but it bowed around Martha’s Birkenstock and bounced back, hitting Stoughie smartly on the fingers. Martha interpreted the following sounds as cursi
ng, dancing around, and sucking on knuckle joints.

  “I doubt you really want to take it to court,” she said judiciously, not moving her foot. “What with the terrible publicity, and the strength of our suit for malicious persecution, I suspect it will put you out of business.”

  “Malicious persecution?”

  “And slander, of course. As well as attempt to defraud. Your insurance won’t cover you for this, you know. Mr. Alexander thinks we have a case cut out for us with pinking shears.”

  This was not strictly true. Mr. Alexander had been much more guarded. He had ideas for the defense, but Martha, legally uneducated, still preferred the sound of hers.

  The crack of gray daylight wavered, as Stoughie moved about on the other side of the door. Then Martha yelped at a very sharp attack upon her instep and she withdrew her foot. Laughing in the most unpleasant way, Stoughie thrust the pointed iron ferrule of an umbrella through the crack as though teasing an animal before he slammed the door once more.

  “Swine,” whispered Martha, adding louder, “You are out of business for that, Stoughie. I have here a list of names of musicians who are willing to testify that you were either grossly late in your contracted payments, you underpaid, or you did not pay at all! Listen to this:”

  Stoughie made a rude noise, but Martha ignored it. “This last hour I’ve called Hector Galleux, Mâirtín Dunning and his brother Lou, Robin Petrie and Dan Carnahan, Sister Frye, Chris Caswell, Earl LeBeau, and the Synco-pates. And you know, not one of them failed to offer to help? How many of them do you think said they only wished they had hauled your ashes years ago?

  “Don, you do not have either hard evidence or a basis of business goodwill upon which to build something. Mayland, on the other hand, seems to have no enemies to speak of and just oodles of time and money with which to insure his constitutional rights.” The word “constitutional” sounded funny to Martha, coming out of her own mouth.

  Her words had an effect on Stoughie, though not exactly the one for which she had hoped. “He can rot!” the man roared, sending the door into a tremble. “He can rot, rot, ROT in jail!”