Short stories collection

by Fletcher Flora

  I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn’t look any different from the way I’d looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.

  The bartender said, “Good evening, Mr. Wren,” and cocked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.

  “The usual,” I said.

  He put a couple of cubes in a glass and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I’d interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.

  The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.

  “You don’t look like a blackmailer,” I said.

  An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. “Thanks. You don’t look like a murderer, either.”

  “It’s a funny world,” I said.

  We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, “You’re a little previous. Right now I’m a poor relation. So’s Cindy. You know Cindy, don’t you? She’s the girl you peep at through a telescope. We’re just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won’t have any money for blackmailers until the estate’s settled.”

  The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.

  “You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you’ll get from Grandfather.”

  “In that case, what the hell are you after?”

  Our eyes came together, locking in the glass, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn’t come from compassion or conviction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.

  “Nothing that need worry you, if you’re reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die.” He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. “I’m a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I’ll use any available means to get what I want. In the light of yesterday’s events, you should be able to understand that.”

  “You’re talking all around it,” I said. “The point, I mean.”

  The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. “I’m thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her.”

  I guess I’d known all along what was coming. I guess I’d known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it’ll be easy. This time it’ll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.

  “You can go to hell,” I said.

  His white teeth showed pleasantly. “My friend, you are the one in peril of going to hell. I can send you with a few words.”

  Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, “You’re lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl.”

  I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.

  “Since she’s involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to hell. In case she isn’t, I’ll be here until eleven.”

  “You can stay forever,” I said. “You can stay forever and to hell with you.”

  I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn’t resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.

  In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.

  I’d kill him, of course. I’d kill him, and it would be a pleasure. It would be the greatest pleasure I’d ever have on earth, except the pleasure that Cindy brought. Thinking of it clearly that way made me feel better, almost uplifted, and I got out of the convertible and went into the lodge and up to the room with the light burning.

  Cindy was in bed with a book open, but I could tell she hadn’t been reading. I stood leaning against the door, looking across at her, and pretty soon, she said, “I heard you drive up several minutes ago.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been sitting down there thinking. I’ve been thinking about how to kill a man.”

  “No, Tony. Not again.”

  “It’s the only way. I’ve always heard that one murder begets another, and I guess that’s the way it is.”

  “We’ll have money, Tony. Lots of money. We can pay.”

  “Like you said, he’d bleed us. He’d bleed us as long as we lived. Besides, he’s got money. He isn’t interested in getting any more.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants you.”

  Her eyes dilated, and the breath rattled in her throat. I watched her lips come open and bright color creep under gold, and I thought again of the pleasure of killing Evan Lane.

  “What do you mean, Tony?”

  “Just what I said, honey. He wants you. The same way I want you. The same way any man who looks at you this side of eighty must want you. He’s the guy with the telescope. Remember?”

  She came out of the bed in a mist of white nightgown that barely existed, and I went to meet her. Against my shoulder, she said, “What now, Tony? What’ll we do?”

  “I told you, honey. I’ll kill him before the night’s over.”

  “No. We’ll find another way, Tony. There is another way.”

  “There is, honey. The way he wants. Is it the way you want?”

  “It’d be better than prison, Tony. Better than the death house.”

  I dug my fingers into her arms until she gasped with pain.

  “Don’t say that, Cindy. Don’t.”

  “I’m thinking of us, Tony. You and me and the big dream. Are we going to throw it all away because some louse wants a cheap experience? We can’t do that now.”

  “We won’t throw anything away. If he wants an experience, he can die. Dying’s the biggest experience of all.”

  “It’ll point. Oh, Tony, can’t you see? Two deaths like that, the location of his lodge, all the things together. Together, they’ll point right back at us. They’ll dig it all out. Besides, maybe he’s already on his way to the sheriff.”

  I shook my head. “No. He’s at the Inn waiting for you. He said he’d wait until eleven.”

  “I’d better go, Tony. I’d better go see him. Maybe we can work it out short of what he really wants.”

  “No. Not a prayer. If you saw him, you’d know.”

  “Give me a chance, Tony.”

  “There isn’t any chance.”

  “I don’t want to die, Tony. I don’t want you to die. If we have to kill him, let it be later. Let it be when the time’s exactly right. Oh, Tony, give me a chance to save us.”

  Her golden flesh b
urned through the white mist, but I was suddenly spent and impotent, and I turned and went away to my own room and lay down in the darkness.

  After a while, I heard the convertible come to life below my window and move off down the drive.

  I kept on lying there in the darkness.

  There was no warmth in the sun, and the wind blowing in across the lake was very cold. The timber stood naked against the sky above its fallen leaves.

  In her room, Cindy was packing. I went in and closed the door and stood leaning against it.

  “Going somewhere, Cindy?”

  “Yes. Back to town. Summer’s over, and it’s getting cold, and it’s time to go back.”

  “Going alone, Cindy?”

  “Please, Tony. We’ve been over it all so often. You know how it is.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Like you said a long time ago, you’re saving us. Two months ago, Cindy. A long time.”

  She kept going back and forth between the closet and her bag, not looking at me. She was wearing brown velvet pajamas with six inches of golden skin between the pants and the top, and the effect of the brown velvet and the golden skin was a matter of shading that made my heart ache.

  “You’re going with Evan. Evan, the pretty blackmailer.”

  “It’s for us, Tony. For you and me.”

  “I know. That’s what I keep telling myself. She’s making a big sacrifice, I keep telling myself. But now maybe it’s time to let Evan Lane start sacrificing. Maybe it’s time now to let him make the big sacrifice for us, the same way Grandfather made it.”

  She stopped halfway to the bag and turned toward me, holding in her hands a scarlet cashmere sweater that was like a great soft splash of blood against the brown velvet.

  “He’s got us, Tony. However much we hate him, he’s got us, and you know it.”

  “I should’ve killed him the first night.”

  “He’ll get tired of it pretty soon, Tony. I know he will. Then it’ll be you and me again.”

  “Sure. You and me and Acapulco. You and me and the hot nights.”

  “It will, Tony. It will.”

  I went over to her fast and took a handful of her golden hair. I pulled her head back hard until her slender throat was a tight arch and her lips were pulled apart.

  “Is that the truth, Cindy?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “Say it. Say it’s the truth and the whole truth, so help you God.”

  “It is, Tony. It’s the truth and the whole truth, so help me God.”

  I let go of her hair, and her head came forward and down until her mouth was warm and alive on the base of my neck, and her arms came up around me.

  “I love you, Cindy. I’ve murdered for you, and I’d die for you, and there’s no place to go without you but hell.”

  “It won’t be long now, Tony,” she whispered. “Not long now.”

  Then I went out of her room and downstairs. From a desk in the den behind the living room, I got a .38 calibre revolver and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Outside, I angled down through the naked timber to the artificial beach and turned right along the shore.

  The grass around the lake was dying, but it was still long and tough and hard to walk in, and in spite of the chill, the shirt under my jacket was soon wet with sweat. It was a small lake, but it took me well over an hour to walk around it to Evan Lane’s lodge.

  The lodge sat among the trees. I went up the slope and across the front veranda to the door and knocked, but there was no response. I thought at first that I’d come too late, but when I went around back, I saw his car still in its shed, so I returned to the veranda and sat down on the top step.

  From where I sat, I could look at an easterly angle and see the timber growing west of our lodge across the lake. Swinging my eyes a little farther east, I saw more trees, but they were thicker and closer and growing on a kind of little peninsula that jutted out into the water from the end of the lake. I got up and went down to the west end of the veranda, where the angle of vision was sharper, but I still couldn’t see anything but the heavy growth of scrub trees on the little peninsula. I went back to the top step and sat down again.

  Except for the soft sighing of the trees, there was no sound. Under the pale sun, the lake was quiet. My mind was quiet with the quiet that comes when things are accepted.

  Down by the lake, beyond the trees, there was suddenly the faint sound of whistling. The whistling grew louder as it came nearer through the trees, and pretty soon Evan Lane appeared on the slope, dressed in a bright plaid shirt, open at the throat, and corduroy trousers. When he saw me sitting on the step, the whistling broke for a moment and then resumed.

  A few steps from the veranda, Lane pulled up, saying, “Well. Mr. Wren. Your neighborliness is appreciated, but it comes a little late. I’m returning to town tonight.”

  “I know,” I said. “Cindy’s home packing.”

  “Yes? I still have mine to do. I know you’ll understand.”

  “Sure. I’ll only stay a minute. I was just sitting here admiring your view. You could improve it, you know, by having the trees cut off that little peninsula. If you had the trees cut down, you could see our place across the lake. You could even see the beach and the raft.”

  He turned slowly to follow the direction of my gazer and when he turned back, his eyes were alive with that swimming, cynical amusement I had seen in the Inn’s barroom.

  “Oh, yes. I did say I spotted you from the veranda, didn’t I? But, of course, it no longer matters.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It no longer matters. As far as you’re concerned, nothing will ever matter again.”

  I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. The bullet struck him just under the nose, and he went down like an empty sack.

  I sat there a little longer, looking with a kind of cold detachment at the crumpled body, and then I got up and went back down the slope and around the end of the lake. By the time I got back to our side and the beach, the afternoon was almost gone. Crossing the beach toward the timber in front of the lodge, I thought for a moment that I saw Grandfather’s bright towel lying on the sand where he’d dropped it over two months ago, but of course the towel wasn’t really there at all.

  I went up through the timber and into the lodge, and Cindy was in the living room with a glass in her hand. She was still wearing the brown velvet pajamas, and when I looked at her, there was still in my heart, in spite of everything, the pain of my love and the sadness of a great loss.

  “It’s late, Tony. You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “I went around to the other side of the lake,” I said. “I called on Evan Lane.”

  The glass moved sharply in her hand. “Why, Tony? Why?”

  “He wasn’t home when I got there,” I said, “and I sat on the veranda until he came. I learned something while I was sitting there, honey. I learned that you can’t see our beach or the raft at all from his place. He never used a telescope, as he said he did. He never saw me drown the old man. I kept trying to think how he could have known, and the only thing I could think was that you told him.”

  I waited a few seconds, and she tried to speak, but no sound could pass through her constricted throat. After a while, I went on talking in a quiet kind of way with no anger in my voice, because there was really no anger in me.

  “Yes, honey. You told him. You told him because you were hot for each other, and he could move in with a new kind of blackmail, and there would be nothing I could do about it because he knew I was a murderer. You talked about the big dream. The dream was there, all right, but I was never in it. When the time came, you’d have gone away, all right, but never with me. He was the one, honey. He was the one from the beginning, but first you had to have Grandfa
ther dead. You had to have him dead for his money, because you wanted his money in addition to Evan’s. He didn’t have the guts to do his own killing. He didn’t have the guts, and you didn’t have the strength. So you drafted me. Well, the old man’s dead now, as you wanted him, and Evan Lane is dead, too. He’s lying on the slope in front of his lodge, and he’s dead forever.”

  She tried again to speak, but nothing came from her throat except a dry sob.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll never know how sorry.”

  I took out the gun, and the glass fell from her hand, and her voice came at last with a hot rush.

  “I don’t care if he’s dead, Tony. Honest to God, I don’t. We can still go away together. We can still have the dream.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll go away together, honey. I’ve got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way.”

  “No, Tony. For God’s sake, no.” I pulled the trigger then, and there was only a little bang that wasn’t very loud at all, and a black spot appeared as if by magic in the golden area of skin just below the place where her heart lay hidden. Her legs folded slowly, lowering her to her knees, and she pressed one hand, with the fingers spread, over the black spot. A thin trickle of blood seeped out brightly between two of the fingers. The gold-flecked eyes were wide with shock and terrible supplication.

  “Please, Tony. Please, please … “

  Then she lay quietly on the floor, and I turned and walked out onto the veranda. I leaned against the railing, looking off into the timber where night had come, and from one of the trees came the crying of a crazy-voiced loon. I put the barrel of the gun into my mouth until the sharp sight was digging into the roof, and even then, when there was no reasonable alternative, I was a little surprised to realize I was actually going to do it.

  THE COLLECTOR COMES AFTER PAYDAY

  (Originally published in Manhunt, August 1953)

  FRANKIE looked through a lot of bars before he found the old man. He was sitting in a booth in a joint on lower Market Street with a dame Frankie didn’t know. They were both sitting on the same side of the booth, and Frankie could see that their thighs were plastered together like a couple of strips of Scotch tape.