Black-Eyed Stranger

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Oh, I am. I am. Never mind. Go on, get out of this place before anybody shows up. At least you’ll be safe.”

  She pricked her ears up. “Who is going to come?”

  He looked at her and his face was frantic. “I don’t know,” he yelled.

  “What are you so afraid of, Sam? Please.”

  “I told you.” He talked rapidly. “It’s a procession. Or I fear so. Why would they ask if they weren’t on their way? Only I told your people. And Alan’s on the way, too.”

  “Alan!”

  “And who is going to get here first I do not know. Maybe by now Alan’s found the turnoff. Or maybe it’s Ambielli.”

  But she was joyful. “Why, if it’s Alan!”

  “Yeah, then you’re all right,” he looked desperately sad, “if you’ll be careful. And make them be careful. Ah, sister, Will you remember? I won’t be here. Either way, I’ll die. Ah, hurry.”

  She didn’t budge. Looking at him, she said, “I was scared this morning. It’s a bad feeling.”

  “Telling me.” He stood looking at her intently.

  “But it’s worthless,” she cried. “Why can’t you throw it away, Sam. It’s got you mixed up. Don’t be so.”

  He groaned. “It isn’t the hero who does it the hard way. I’ve died my thousand deaths, believe me, already. Please, now …”

  “Oh, I’m not going, if Alan is on the way.”

  He sat back against the table and covered his eyes. In a moment he said, pathetically, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Cried wolf too often. What am I going to do if I can’t scare you? You’re not scared. You won’t hide.”

  “Sam, you come with me. We can both hide, in the trees, and see who is coming.”

  “I am your danger,” he shook his head. “Get away from me. You want to be hunted down in the dark? Don’t hide with me.”

  She shook her head, thinking of shadows in his mind. She felt sorry.

  “I wish you weren’t mad,” he complained, with his eyes still hidden. Then, softly, “I had a hunch you’d listen. I thought you’d he for me.”

  “Sam, I am.” She pitied him. “I am listening.”

  “Ambielli, once he’s sure I’ve got you, is going to …”

  “Kill you. Yes, I know.” She’d heard this too often.

  “But he doesn’t want you any more. Your papa paid, ransom to Ambielli. Never mind that. You’ll never get the straight of it. Means you can freely go home. Leave, please leave me. If you leave me, I can try to cover.”

  She bit her thumb. Her hand fell. “You’re afraid of Ambielli,” she said slowly, “because you did save me.”

  “Yeah, I saved you, sister.” He said harshly, “I am your hero. But don’t you He for me. A more pitiful hero you never met than me, sister. I had you saved, that is. Right now I’m kicking your life around again.” He grabbed her. “Want to be a witness?” he raged at her. “Ambielli wouldn’t let a witness live. For God’s sake believe that. Get out of here,” he bellowed. “You can’t wait for Alan now!”

  She pitied him. “Sam, what must I do? How … lie for you?”

  “Aaah,” he murmured, holding her elbows, thrusting against her stubborn push to stand still. “You could have said you saw no faces. You didn’t know who took you away. Told this to the cops, the papers …”

  “Lied to … Ambielli, Sam?”

  “In effect. And so to everybody.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Especially Alan, that’s what I meant. You could do it, if you’d go.”

  She took a step in the direction he wanted her to go. “How could I he to Alan?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Not forever. Ambielli isn’t going to live forever. I never meant forever.” Now he had her moving. He was pushing her to the door. “Ambielli’s got to be sure. You could still he for me. Sister, if you’ll go.”

  She pitied him and all she really believed in was his terror. “Sam, I’m going to stay. I’m not afraid.”

  He let go of her suddenly. “I don’t hear anything. Do you?”

  “No.” She stood there quietly. She shook her head.

  “Should have got here by now,” he said anxiously. Suddenly he reeled back toward the table and sat down in the chair. “Mother, mother, I’m mixed up. Maybe it wasn’t Baby’s face. Maybe I couldn’t see. Maybe the cop said another lake. I’m hearing things. Ah, how right you are. It makes me worthless.”

  She said, quietly, “Sam, don’t you see? I can explain it all to Alan and Daddy. Without lying. Ambielli won’t find out for sure, through us.”

  “Of course not. Of course not. Only fancy.” He drew a long breath. “All right. It is possible that I am too devious. I would run, I would twist, I would hide. But, sister, I can listen. All right, there’s a fifty-fifty chance, at least. You’re not afraid. All right, it’s worthless.”

  She sat down quietly. “I am too devious,” Sam said feverishly. “So Alan says. How right he is. You notice? Types he calls us. All right. He’s right. And I hate him because I don’t want him to be right. And that’s a fact. I want to think we’re mixed-up mixtures, every one. I want to think we’ve got our deviations, and we’ve got a chance, because we can listen, and the whole world’s a slippery place because of that. I don’t want to know myself a type, and doomed to do what a smart one like Alan reads in the tabulations. I don’t want to think you are a romantic young thing, period. It’s too God-damn simple! And I don’t believe it and I can’t do it and I don’t want to!”

  “And I’m not” she said indignantly. She was drawn to him, to comfort him. She stood.

  “Well, you’d have to be, to he for me. And how that’s devious!” He put his head down on the table. “I can’t hear anything. God knows, I make mistakes.”

  She said gently, “I don’t know much about you, Sam. I just know you got into this mess, you’re scared the way you are, on account of me.”

  He said, “I don’t know what it was, either. I just didn’t want you to die. Took a freak notion.”

  “For a stranger,” she said.

  “For a … one,” he said oddly.

  She said, “You aren’t a type, either. We just—It’s funny.”

  “Go home. Go home. Run away. Don’t stay. I’m afraid!” He looked frantic.

  Something turned her head.

  There was a face against the glass, high in the kitchen wall. She could see it through the doorway, just as she had once imagined. It was a real face. Eyes, nose …

  “Sam,” she said, by some instinct, very quietly, “there’s a face …”

  Chapter 18

  HE didn’t move.

  “Sam, is it Alan?” She stood beside him, her hand lightly on his shoulder.

  “No,” he said, “because I didn’t hear anything.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “Sit in my lap,” he said. And he turned and drew her down and cradled her in his arms. Yet, he didn’t touch her. He sat like the Lincoln in the monument, his tall body brooding around her. He sat still as stone.

  She put her left arm up around him.

  “I never wanted to play it this way, sister,” he murmured. “Know what to do?”

  “I’m not me?” she whispered.

  “Small hope. But every fly tries.”

  “To wiggle out,” she said. “Is it Ambielli?”

  “Must be.”

  “But Alan is coming.”

  “Try to … waste Ambielli’s time. They might get here. Like the marines.”

  He kissed her. But it was play acting. He didn’t really touch her.

  She slid her fingers into his hair. “Sam, you have a gun,” she whispered, “haven’t you? I can feel it in your pocket.”

  “Your name is Bonnie Mae. Miss Mae.”

  “All right, Sam. Why don’t they come in?”

  “Time is wasting. Don’t complain.”

  She sat up straighter and took his face in two hands. His eyes were sick and terrible. “You fool, Sam,” s
he said in a loud flat voice. And she kissed him and let her lips slide on his cheek and said, below his ear, with curiosity, “Why don’t you kill Ambielli?”

  He pulled his head back to look at her. The flat dusty look was gone from his eyes. “So simple?” he inquired. “To get Ambielli? You and all your ignorance and all your money, and I never thought of it!”

  “Don’t have to sit and be killed …”

  “Take the risk?” he inquired. “Walk right up to the risk, and then it’s self-defense? Who trained you up? Your mama? Sister, there is no such thing as a type. There is not.”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s a lie. It’s a big lie.”

  “It’s a big fat lie.”

  He kept laughing and he rocked her. “My bloodthirsty lamb, will you let me?” He no longer needed to explain. They were finished with plodding through screens of language. She used her body to conceal his hand that put the gun in the table drawer. It was necessary to conceal the weapon they would use, if and when …

  Now their hearts beat with exactly the same rhythm as they listened. It was odd. It was an enlargement of the heart, a doubling.

  Suddenly he let go his embrace and she nearly fell. He said, in perfect suspicious surprise, “Somebody’s out there!”

  And she was easily surprised, too, and easily she turned as if she were shocked to look at the door.

  He put her aside, and she allowed him to do so reluctantly as if she hadn’t heard what he had heard and didn’t believe he had heard anything. Sam got cautiously up. He said in rather an angry tone, “Somebody sure as hell is out there.”

  Somebody tapped on the door.

  “Who’s that? Who’s there?” Sam’s cry was prompt.

  The voice, outside, was matter-of-fact and calm. “Sam?”

  “Huh! Wait a minute, Bonnie. Company, for the Lord’s—”

  “What kind of company?” Kay said shrewishly. “I thought you said nobody’s going to be up here. Listen.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sam, close to the door, said, “For the Lord’s sake, is that you, boss?” in a squeak of astonishment.

  “It is I, Sam,” Ambielli’s voice replied.

  Katherine Salisbury flounced over to a bunk. “Why don’tcha let the Professor in, Sam?” she snapped. “Don’t mind me.”

  Sam’s eyes rolled to look at her and they were full of laughter and her heart caught in her throat and settled back and she puffed out her bosom and crossed her legs high and the sense of danger sang in her head, her arm, her breast, and it was marvelous. And she heard him say so, heard him murmur, “Oh, this is marvelous!” and he swung open the door.

  “Hi, Ambielli. And Baby, too. We-ell, come in. Come in.”

  The small thin unhealthy man standing in the door was dangerous. The big man behind him was only his weapon, controlled by the fingers of his hand, obedient to his anger. “Stand still, Sam,” he said softly.

  Sam’s mouth opened and closed. The big man pushed through, slapped and felt of Sam’s pockets.

  Kay looked on with round eyes. He really did do that. He felt of Sam’s pockets. It was such a familiar thing. It was almost like being home again, in a world one knew. This was a way to behave, a convention.

  She said, trying to keep a flat twang in her voice, “Who’s your friends, Sam?”

  “Listen, Bonnie …”

  “Stand still.” Sam stood still.

  The big one turned to look at her and his lips were pushed forward to a pout and his brows knitted in pain at the injustice of everything. But Sam slouched there, as if he weren’t worried, but just resigned to waiting out this time-wasting misunderstanding.

  Kay said, “Whoever they are, they got nice ways. I’ll say that.”

  “Wait a minute, Bonnie. Please.” Sam didn’t look at her. It was right that he didn’t. It was a good act. But she could feel the red-brown eyes of that small man scorching her now. She leaned on the wall at the head of the bunk and she dragged her own eyelids up insolently and she stared back at him. She said to herself, inside her head, who do you think you are?

  “This is Ambielli,” Sam said. Kay thought to herself, made her mind repeat it, Ambielli who? Which one? The big one or the little one? She knew these thoughts went out across the room just as if she had spoken.

  “What’s the girl doing here?” Ambielli said and his voice was thinned, sharper, like a nervous blade.

  Sam said with a touch of stiffness. “I might ask the same of you.”

  “You don’t need to ask.”

  “Don’t I?” said Sam thoughtfully. He took an apparently absent-minded step.

  “Stand still,” said Baby Hohenbaum. “You heard him.”

  “Excuse me, Baby. Sorry.” Sam looked bored with the convention. “Still nervous, eh?”

  Ambielli walked closer to Kay. Now the big one, too, came closer. The beams of their inquiring attention crossed and she felt pin-pointed at that crossing. They were converging upon her. She could not stare them both down. She looked, she spoke, alarm. “Sam, who are these guys? Listen, I’m not gonna—What is this? If it’s a holdup, give them your wallet. Get them out of here.”

  Sam said, smoothly, “Is it a holdup, Ambielli?”

  Ambielli turned around. “You won’t try to be witty, Sam. Will you?”

  “I can see it’s not your mood,” said Sam quickly.

  “Shall I put him quiet, boss?”

  “No.”

  Baby said, “What about her?”

  Ambielli’s eyes raked her again. “Who is she, Sam?”

  “A friend,” said Sam. “A little friend. Miss Mae, this is Mr. Ambielli. And Mr. Hohenbaum.” Nobody said how do you do. Sam shifted his weight. “What’s on your mind, boss?”

  Kay broke into the rhythm. She bounced up. “I couldn’t care less what’s on their minds. I’m telling you, Sam. Either they leave or I do.”

  “Aw, Bonnie …”

  “All right,” she said. “This isn’t my idea of a quiet evening.”

  “Believe me, honey, it isn’t mine.”

  “Well, get them out of here.”

  “Look into her bag,” Ambielli said quietly. His eyes hadn’t left her.

  “You will not!” She flashed around and made a grab for the handbag that lay on a shelf. Baby’s big hand took her arm and bent it away. She squealed and kicked at him. “Sam!”

  “Sorry, honey. Look, relax.” Sam’s shoulders squirmed. “They’ve got something on their minds. Nothing to do with you. Just be patient, please.”

  She sat down and devoted herself to feeling resentfully patient. Baby’s hands rifled her bag. He looked hurt. He whined, “She don’t look right, boss. Listen to the way she talks.”

  Ambielli said, “Yes. I was listening. So this is Bonnie? A week end, Sam?”

  “A delicate way to put it,” Sam said irritably. “I realize you must be nervous about something. I wish—”

  “Don’t be stupid, Sam.”

  “Come out with it, then.”

  “You never talk, Sam?”

  “What do you want me to talk about?” Sam stepped, and the step brought him nearer the table.

  “I’m asking whether you’ve talked already, Sam?”

  Sam didn’t deny it. He simply looked lost in thought a moment. Then, as if he found a verifying idea of his own, he exclaimed, “I see what you mean.”

  “I thought,” purred Ambielli, “that you would.”

  “You were up there in Salisbury’s apartment.” Sam’s voice was eager with curiosity. “How was that?”

  “You were up there, Sam.”

  Sam said, “For questioning. You, too?” He managed to exude curiosity.

  Ambielli said, “If you talked to them, Sam, you know I’ll kill you?” The voice was thin steel.

  Sam’s voice had a tremor. “Personally?”

  “Perhaps even personally,” said the little man. The big man pouted.

  “Be an honor,” Sam said grimly.

  For the fi
rst time, Kay believed. There was no doubt that this little man would do as he said. Once he was sure, he would kill Sam Lynch. Something shimmered and quivered and vibrated inside the small shell of his body. It would kill. It wanted to kill. It could hardly wait.

  But she made herself put forth curiosity. She pushed it out of her, generated it within her mind. She said inside, over and over, What is this about? What is this about?

  Sam said, irritably, “Well?”

  “See whether that’s a wig,” the little man said, and Kay felt the big hand in her hair and there was a tug and a yank and a frightful pain, and she raised her hands to her scalp as she was dragged forward.

  He let her go and she fell on her hands and knees, and she couldn’t see because of the tears of pain, but the big man took no interest in her hurt. He said, “It’s hair.”

  She scrambled to her feet, drying her eyes on her wrist, and let the simplicity of pure rage take her completely. She cried out and with her fists she tried to pound the big man, and he grabbed her as she fought him. Words kept coming out of her throat.

  Sam moved, naturally, away from the struggle. He sat down in the chair beside the table and he tilted it and he was laughing. His fingers caught at the table edge as if to keep the chair balanced on its two hind legs, and he kept laughing. Struggling with the big one, she thought surely it was time, but Ambielli never took his eyes off Sam so Sam kept laughing.

  She twisted toward him. “And what’s so funny?” she howled. “Tell me the joke. You, Sam!”

  “Bonnie.” Sam sobered. “Let her go, Baby. Bites, doesn’t she? You want to ruin my private life?” His eyes crinkled to laugh.

  Ambielli said, “Let her go.”

  “Aw,” said Baby in profound disgust, “this ain’t Katherine Salisbury.”

  It was as if a stick cracked on something, as if a sharp rap sounded, commanding silence. And there was silence except for her panting breath.

  Then Sam’s body stiffened, and his two feet crashed on the floor, and his whole body jerked forward and then back. “You’re looking for Katherine Salisbury?” he said as if he were strangling and the flesh of his cheeks rose up to narrow the wild mirth rising in his eyes. It was perfect, Sam’s astonishment. The perfect reaction, including, as it honestly must, to be perfect, the joke of it. It shouldn’t have been perfect. Ambielli said, “Shut up,” and another brittle thing began to crack.