Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Martha’s ears rang. There was a shift in the air of the hall, as though a door had opened, but not this door. Overwhelmed, she took breath to say, “Oh, I doubt he will, Don. I imagine he’s out already, in fact,” and she turned to go, her list of names a bit crumpled in her hand.

  At the end of the hall the door to the dance studio was open, and eight wondering eyes stared out. The woman with the drum was at the top. She gave Martha an encouraging smile.

  “Hey! I could string fishing line across the top of the stairs, about eighteen inches up, and then shout ‘fire’ for a while, till he runs out….”

  “Thanks. Let me prepare my alibi first,” Martha answered, and she limped down into the daylight.

  Searching for Lambs

  The sergeant’s string of curses began with a “goddamn” and ended with “bugger,” the middle being both more imaginative and less clear. Officer Scherer looked up from his typing in mild alarm.

  “That Long character. Every new bit messes things up for him worse.”

  Scherer frowned. “So why should that piss you off?”

  Sergeant Anderson heaved back into his desk chair. “Dunno. But it does.

  “Here—look. Five years ago. Robbery and a dead man. Neck broken, of all things. Found by the Coast Guard on the water, just to make an extra tie-in with this thing here.” He flung the computer-generated report at Scherer.

  Who read it, with his superior’s simmering silence as a background. “I don’t know, sir. This comes out with him smelling like a rose. Almost killed, along with the old lady—I like her—and—”

  “Then don’t call her an old lady,” said Anderson snappishly.

  Scherer raised his innocent red-brown eyes. “Well, anyway. Just because he happens to be there when one crook kills another crook—”

  Anderson made a noise like a teakettle coming to boil. “Just happens to be there. Just happens to lose his temper and almost strangle someone. Just happens to be there again when another gentleman decides to end it all with a rope. Are you asking me to believe that Mr. Mayland Long has a gift for attracting this particular kind of violence? Like honey to bees—our Mr. Long for broken necks?”

  Scherer was only half cowed by this eloquence. He shrugged. “It’s like that, sometimes. My mother had her car smashed by pickup trucks five times in three years. Always while parked on the street too.

  “I wonder what happened to the daughter in the case?”

  Anderson snorted, his interest not extending that far. “Ask Records.”

  Anderson asked Long about it.

  “My memory is not perfect,” said the very composed gentleman, sitting cross-legged on the padded and orthopedically sound green chair in the cozy room where they had taken him for interrogation. “I had lost a lot of blood.”

  Anderson nodded, grudgingly. He pulled forward the single hard chair in that padded room and sat down on it.

  “Mrs. Macnamara’s story is that she came to find this man Threve lying dead and you in very bad shape and Rasmussen coming at you with a… wrench, or something.”

  “Mayland, my advice to you is to say nothing.”

  “It was a gun,” Long answered as if he had not heard the lawyer.

  “You don’t have to answer any of these questions, Mayland,” said Alexander. Turning an almost icy regard to Sergeant Anderson, he continued. “I hope, at least, that you’re prepared to apply these questions in some way to the matter for which my client has been arrested?” The lawyer was leaning against the window, his tie at half-mast, looking coolly from Anderson to Long.

  “Prepared seven ways from Sunday!” Anderson spoke with heat.

  “Don’t worry about it at all, David,” said Long to his attorney. “The sergeant is naturally interested in coincidences.”

  Alexander was unmoved. “Coincidences are well within your rights, Mayland, and this man is not a social acquaintance, for your standards of politeness to—”

  “I will worry about my rights when I feel threatened, David, and I will decide my circle of acquaintance.”

  Alexander tightened his jaw and sighed. He fixed the detective with a glare like that of a hound held back from attack by the word of a too-trusting master.

  Long continued, “The quicker we finish this, the quicker I will be able to take care of Martha, and that is what interests me now.”

  “Famous last words, my friend!” David Alexander pulled his knit tie through his collar and wadded it in a ball in his hands. He sat down on the edge of the soft chair opposite to his client’s.

  Long spoke over his lawyer’s voice. “It was a gun. He aimed it at me, but he did not shoot me. I was looking at him.”

  Anderson’s trick eyebrows went up. “Beg pardon?”

  “I was looking at him. It is much more difficult to do harm to a person who is looking into your eyes. This, experience has led me to believe.”

  “But the man had just killed his partner, hadn’t he?”

  Long sighed, unhurriedly. “That I cannot answer. I was very, dizzy. But it could well be that his partner was not looking at him.”

  Anderson stared. “And then he let you knock him down and tie him up.”

  “Evidently he did.”

  A thought brought a fleeting smile to the sergeant’s face. “But wasn’t he looking at you when you did it?”

  “I am not bothered with that handicap,” answered Long, simply and without noticeable pride.

  “And the San Francisco police believed all this?”

  Long nodded. “After consideration, they did.”

  “You must have had a good lawyer.”

  “Thank you,” said Alexander, very dryly. “May we go now?”

  “One more question.” He looked very sharply into Long’s eyes, as though disputing that the Asian was immune to that sort of influence. “Is there, in your knowledge, any connection between these three incidents? The one five years ago, your… interaction with Don Stoughie, and the death of George St. Ives.”

  Long leaned forward toward the sergeant, and when he answered he seemed more interested than defensive. “I can think of none, Sergeant Anderson. But you should ask Martha.”

  Anderson blinked. “Are you… suggesting she may have some kind of involvement…?”

  “I am not suggesting but telling you a thing: that Martha Macnamara sees what is really there. She will see a connection, if one exists to be seen. And she will tell you what it is.

  “Nor need you look at me that way, Sergeant, as though I am throwing her to you: a sacrifice in my own interest. There is nothing you or your police force can do that could do her harm. Except remain in error, of course.”

  Anderson signaled for the door to be opened and the three of them walked out: first the sergeant, then the lawyer, and finally Long. He turned to take a final glance down the hall in the direction of the cell where he had been incarcerated.

  He caught up with Anderson. “Tell me, Sergeant. Who was that boy in the cell with me?”

  Anderson’s brooding expression vanished. He snickered silently and rubbed his hand over his mouth to wipe off an undignified grin. “Oh, Jerry? Jerry Carver. He’s an old friend of ours.”

  Long took three steps and then ventured: “He… stared at me in the oddest manner this afternoon.”

  Well he might, thought Anderson. Well anyone might. But then the explanation struck him and he giggled again, audibly.

  “That would be your suit. Jerry’s nickname is ‘The Silkie.’ Not a sea monster: he’s got a thing for silks. He steals them. Usually underwear; but I guess a raw-silk jacket is good enough for him. Sometimes he puts his booty on all together, panties in layers and brassieres and stockings with old-fashioned seams, and he goes walking in the mall. Sometimes he burns them, in a pile. Dangerous, this time of year, what with the dry hills.

  “He’s in and out of institutions, our Jerry. Harmless, at least so far, but completely unreachable.”

  Long turned to Anderson. On his very dark face was
building a kind of outrage that neither his arrest nor the extensive questioning had been able to elicit. “And you dared to put me in with….”

  Alexander, the lawyer, pinched him sharply by the skin of the elbow. Through his silk jacket.

  Martha did not feel successful as she walked the six blocks back to the motel. It had not been her plan to get Stoughie irrationally angry at her. She had not intended her reading of the list to sound so very threatening. It had never entered her head (and this would serve her right) that he would stab at her bare foot that way. She limped and staggered across the cobbled mall, and she wished that whoever had borrowed the van, hadn’t.

  That jazz band, again. She passed it and wished she were playing there, with people in the audience buying her tropical drinks with a little bit of rum in them, and with the sound of the bass guitar and the trumpet. How carefree they were, compared with being the head and founder of a now-defunct Celtic traditional band with one member dead, a manager in jail, and maybe a murderer among the remaining players.

  Halfway down the next block the buildings blocked the sound of the brass and changed it all, and for a moment Martha forgot her problems and even the misery of her bruised and blackening foot. For the sun through the leaves of the blossoming eucalyptus made a comforting and domestic play over the pavement, all peppered with ants. Martha took a breath.

  Three notes of the obscure music behind her snagged in her brain and met a memory, and Martha closed her eyes and heard again Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin singing “An Caoineadh na d’Trí Muire,” “The Lament of the Three Marys,” in the practice room at the Hall. Only last night.

  Martha herself had played the tune on her fiddle many years before someone first sang those words for her. And told her the terrible meaning of the Irish words:

  “Who is it, that fine man there on the tree of suffering? O grief, O my grief. Mother, don’t you recognize your son? O grief, O my grief.”

  And as great sorrow drives out lesser, this old song quieted her restless spirit as it stung her sun-brightened eyes. George was dead. All the sour caring and all the pain and all the music of him departed from them. Silent. Nor was there mother, lover, or even aunt left to grieve for him. Unless it was Sandy, who had been with him, Friday evening. But no, Sandy had seen Elen this morning, and had called and didn’t seem concerned. Not about that. There was no one but Martha, the leader of the band.

  For one still minute Martha Macnamara stood on the sidewalk, favoring her left foot and marking the passing of George St. Ives. The brass band at Cooper House rang around the angles of the stucco buildings like distant war pipes. Martha went back to the motel limping, but with a peaceful face.

  She was only a minute behind Long, who had parted from his frustrated lawyer at the same Cooper House jazz patio. She heard the storming of Elizabeth through the door.

  “I went down the hall because this… this turkey had a phone call. On our phone again. And then he just doesn’t answer, so I stand there pounding like a fool…”

  It was Long she addressed, but Teddy Poznan was the “turkey” in question. He glanced in appeal from Long to Martha. “I was meditating.”

  This was not the politic thing to say to Elizabeth. “Meditation? Hah! What drug do you call ‘meditating’? You don’t even know what the word means!”

  Long attempted to placate. “It has endless meanings, Elizabeth. And it doesn’t matter what Theodore was doing. How long was Marty left alone?”

  Martha started. “Marty?” She bulled past them all and limped furiously to the connecting door.

  Elizabeth wailed in anger and worry. “Yes, yes, she’s gone! Out the door unnoticed! I’ve been all around the streets. That sweet little Pádraig’s been out looking for a half hour and nothing. She’s gone!”

  Martha, in her shock, could think of nothing but the fact that women certainly liked Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin. Even Elizabeth, who liked so few. Martha looked into the bedroom where the child had been napping (too well behaved by half) and she saw the truth of it. She let her head sag sideways into the doorframe, none too gently. “The same nightmare,” she whispered.

  Long spoke, coughing. “Let us remain calm. First, I will go down to the beach. Wait here for me.”

  Martha turned to say she was coming along, but she stopped herself. She knew she couldn’t move like he could, cut the crowds like he could, or dodge the traffic. Not even if both her legs were sound. She knew a moment’s blind jealousy of that sinuous, athletic form, and then she almost laughed, for he went down the hallway coughing like a dying man.

  “To the beach?” Elizabeth remembered what her mother had told her about Marty’s escapade. “Oh, dear God! The traffic. In the middle of the day!”

  Elizabeth sat down with the receiver of the phone in her hand, but she did nothing but stare at the green wall, holding the receiver in her lap. Martha sat down and eased out of her shoes.

  O grief, O my grief.

  “What’d you do to your foot?” asked Teddy, wandering over to her.

  She kept her eyes closed. “Oh. I just put it where I shouldn’t have. Not thinking straight.”

  He squatted at the end of the bed and took the foot in his hands. It was square and the toes had not known polish. Not even much trimming.

  “I can help the swelling to stop. Maybe even keep the bruise down?”

  “How’s that?” Martha worked hard to sound politely interested.

  “With acupressure.”

  Martha nodded that he could try. Teddy was on his feet and moving toward the door with energy. “I need my mosibustion sticks,” he said, and was gone.

  Martha opened her eyes and saw the ceiling. Without moving, she said to her daughter, “I think you should apologize to him. You’ve been rude since you got here, and Teddy hasn’t done a thing wrong.”

  “Unless he killed George St. Ives.” Elizabeth dangled the receiver and suddenly winced, sending her perfect forehead into wrinkles. “Okay, okay, Mother. I’ll apologize. It’s just been such a stinking day.”

  The dial tone from the telephone was making harmonies in Martha’s head, but when she turned to ask her daughter to put it back, she found Elizabeth dialing. “The police?”

  In another second or two the connection was made, and it was obvious her guess was the right one. Elizabeth was very good on the telephone; she gave her story and the necessary information reasonably and without excess emotion. Well, why not? She was a bright and well-educated professional woman. Forceful.

  An officer would be right there.

  “They’re certainly going to know us well at the police station,” murmured Martha.

  Elizabeth stifled a sob. “They’re allowed to know us as well as they want, as long as they find her.”

  Martha sat down beside her on the little bench of the desk. “Remember, Elizabeth? You ran away. We were living on Riverside Drive and the policeman took you in and you wouldn’t answer questions.”

  Elizabeth’s perfect lips grew very tight as she resisted the analogy. “I didn’t run away. The cop was an overbearing pig.”

  Martha nodded. “When we ask Marty, I’m sure she’ll say she wasn’t running away either. Kids always have their reasons.”

  But Elizabeth shook her head, slowly and as though it carried a great weight. “There’s something… something hurting her today. I think she feels I abandoned her, and so she’s—”

  “I think you’re full of shit,” said Martha, and Teddy came in with the moxybustion sticks.

  The boardwalk was not as crowded today, as it was cooler, and there were fewer human forms speckling the white beach. A stiff breeze blew inland and the blue sheet was wrinkled. Long squinted against the wind.

  There was a black shape at the water’s edge, made shapeless and glossy through soaking, and with something frilly, like hair at one end. He ran through the sand to it, scraping the polish off his black leather shoes, but it proved to be only strands of kelp, with their little blond bladders bunched around
them. The moving ribbon of brightness where sea met shore was otherwise unbroken.

  That lump on the sand was a man, and the far one, which had looked promising, turned into a yellow dog. Damn—were his eyes failing him too? The forced run had brought the phlegm up and he was coughing repeatedly.

  He jogged back to the boardwalk. His shoes were full of sand. He was in front of a souvenir shop: the place where Marty had waited with her grandmother while he found her flowered sunglasses. The place which closed last at night. A clerk, young and female, was gazing vaguely out over the street to the vague blue ocean.

  She hadn’t seen a little girl, she told him, but the entranced boredom in her face made her words lack value. He went down the boardwalk.

  Someone shrieked on the little roller coaster: a gratuitous noise, Long thought. People should be more considerate. He shut his mind against all sounds of disaster and went on.

  No one at the hot-dog stand had seen anything. The words of the Wild Mouse Ride ticket taker were swallowed by wind, and he had to shake his head to be understood. The man at the Ferris wheel said he shouldn’t be expected to remember.

  Long walked back the way he had come. His hair blew in his face and that bothered him more than it would have bothered most people. He looked west and out, over the beach and to the high concrete pier.

  That was an ominous place to lose a child.

  But Marty had never shown any interest in getting from the beach up to the pier. Indeed, it looked very heavy and uninviting from below, like this. She would have had to cross over back at Front Street, and a little girl heading toward the beach couldn’t be expected to think of that.

  He looked down the uncompromising length of it, feeling less and less inclined to believe she might have tried to make her way there, when he spied a little knot of people clustered around the end of it. Where St. Ives had been found hanging.

  Full of dread and coughing, Long made the trip down the pier.

  It was only a marketman, his hair slicked back and his apron pink with fish blood, explaining to the visitors how the body had been discovered. Long asked—not this vendor, but another one—if he had seen a little blond girl in a sundress, walking alone.