The Murderer Vine

by Shepard Rifkin

  If I can do it without vomiting again.

  “If your meter reading shows extremes to one side or the other, average it out. Take a few shots with a larger and smaller stop just in case you get rattled and think you’re going crazy. You have plenty of film and it’s cheap.”

  Nothing to do now but wait for available light.

  I sat back on the pile of dirt I had dug out like a dog panting after a valuable bone. My pants were damp on the seat. I would have given twenty bucks to be able to smoke. Anything to take that smell away. My mouth was dry from breathing with it wide open.

  Time crawled. The three boys lay stretched out with their terrible faces upturned to the stars. I didn’t feel any rage or pity. They went down knowing what they were getting into. They play rough in the South. Honor to their courage. But no pity.

  Farr had said I could start shooting as soon as I could make out the F numbers on the lens housing from a distance of two feet.

  Not yet. I could see the outlines of the camera all right, and there was a faint tinge of gray and pink in the east on top of the ridge.

  I stood up and stretched. I heard a deep croak just behind me. Part of my mind said it was a frog, but another part made me whip around and crouch, flinging up my arm to block any blow which might be coming down at me. My foot stepped on a soft mass which wriggled and let out a strangled croak. I almost went five feet in the air with my legs racing wildly, just like in one of those old Mickey Mouse cartoons. But it was just another one of those goddam frogs. This one was only a little one, about three inches long. I had squashed it flat. I felt sorry for it.

  I leaned against a tree trunk. My pants were too damp to sit down. Time crawled some more. I tried to feel warm by thinking of going fishing for hammerhead shark in my brand-new cruiser, which some lucky salesman didn’t yet know was mine.

  Finally I could read the numbers at two feet.

  I shot one roll of each face. I had a problem I hadn’t foreseen when I wanted to shoot the teeth. How to keep the lips back?

  I finally picked up some small twigs from the underbrush under the pines. One across the hinge of the jaws kept them open, and three between the lips.

  I forced myself to work slowly even though the light began to increase. I had a bad moment when I began to reload the first time. The film kept slipping out of the take-up spool. I found my fingers began to tremble with annoyance. I wanted to smash the camera against a tree and then race down the slope and get the hell out of there and go home to safe New York and blackmailers and extortion artists. At least they didn’t have the local cops on their side.

  Instead I counted to twenty slowly. I got a grip on myself. I fed the film in slowly and correctly.

  In ten minutes I was finished. I packed everything away in the camera bag. I shoved the dirt back, stamped it flat, and dumped the weeds as evenly as they had been placed there by Ryerson. It looked the same to me as when I started, but I didn’t have a farmer’s eye.

  I did have enough of one to see my footprints all around. I tried smoothing them out, but my attempt to cover them up made marks just as obvious. I wasn’t working in sand. I had damp soil to deal with. That’s what comes of being a city boy. You live your life on concrete. You never think of footprints.

  If Ryerson saw them — and I had to assume he would — he would think they were there because of the mass grave. He would think so because they wouldn’t be anywhere else. He might think someone was stealing water-melons, but he was no fool. He was bound to get very thoughtful and probably he would phone the sheriff.

  The sheriff might think the FBI had been up there. The sheriff would work his contacts in Jackson and find there were no FBI men around. He might even find out there were no Department of Justice men around either. So it might be a local boy not in the club who might be after the reward. And it might be a stranger in town.

  Me.

  32

  What might work would be a good smoke screen. I remembered listening once to a sergeant lecturing us on guerrilla tactics.

  “You wanna hold up tanks,” he said, “you gotta remember tanks are so vulnerable the jockeys are nervous. They get nervous about anything. We was in the Ardennes in forty-five and I heard a couple Tigers coming down the road. We was buildin’ an antitank barrier across the road and another ten minutes we would finish. I swiped ten soup plates from a house and I laid them across the road in a row. Nice and even.

  “The tanks came up to the plates. They stopped. They couldn’t go around because of the houses. They stopped fifteen minutes wondering what they was. They thought maybe they was some new kind of mines. Every time the hatch would open, I’d let them have a spray. So we built our barrier.”

  I had to think of something like that for Ryerson. Something unusual. Something weird.

  I went back in the woods and scrabbled around. I found the flattened green frog. It looked like a Rorschach blot. I got a branch about four feet long. I went back to my little garden plot. By now I knew it as well as the five people whose guest I had been at the Catfish Club. I shoved aside some of the weeds and dug down. I reached for the face I remembered and pulled loose one of the loosened teeth. I covered everything up again. I sharpened one end of the branch with my pocket knife and split the other end. I jammed the sharp end right into the middle of the weeds in the dead center of the plot. Dead center. Pun by Dunne. I put the frog in the cleft end. I unraveled a thread from my sock and let the tooth dangle from the frog’s mouth.

  I tried to put myself in Ryerson’s muddy farm shoes. He would come across my artwork. Probably not next day, and not the day after. He had a truckload of melons, and it would take him about two days to sell them. So he would be coming up in about three days. Say two to be careful.

  He would puzzle his head about it. He would probably connect it with the most unusual thing that had happened recently, and that would be my appearance looking for watermelons. But he would also know that I’m a nice Canadian and a friend of the sheriff’s: wasn’t I down the night before at the Catfish Club lapping it up with the boys?

  Since he was so stubborn, he’d hate to tell anyone about it. But after a day or so he’d give up and tell the sheriff. Wasn’t it the sheriff who arranged for the murders and the burial? So off to the sheriff he’d go.

  The sheriff would be smarter. He would most likely think it unlikely that I was involved. The sheriff in turn would kick it around for a couple days. He’d try out his conjure man theory. But since there were several in the county, and since they all kept themselves well-behaved — except maybe Old Man Mose, who had hosted the three boys — he’d be sort of paralyzed.

  That Old Man Mose would do such a thing he’d find most unreasonable. People in subjection their whole lives don’t suddenly go around looking for trouble. So he’d drop that line of approach.

  But it would trouble him. He’d kick it around a few days, hating to take it upward to A.B.C. People hate to pass bad news to a superior. The superior gets mad at the news, and some of the anger rubs off on the poor guy who brings them gloomy messages.

  And sooner or later he’d go to A.B.C. And A.B.C. himself would order a quiet little check on me. It was simple common sense. He probably would use those two nice ol’ country boys who’d been kicked out of Thailand for excess enthusiasm. They’d report there was a Harold Wilson at McGill, all right. If they weren’t too careful.

  I might be marked okay. So they’d look elsewhere, probably backtracking on Old Man Mose.

  But by then — and that would take about two weeks — I’d be four or five days out of the country, buried so deep they’d never find me.

  It looked good. The whole situation looked good.

  And the juju would shake them up. I’d like that. When things get turbulent, the bottom gets stirred up. Things come up. I’d make sure to hang around the boys as soon as I got back from New York. Sometimes a watched pot boils.

  I took one last look at my work. It didn’t look like anything a nice Canadian
fellow might do. But I had no time to lounge around and admire my work. I ran through the pine woods. I came out of the underbrush bordering the road just as Kirby rounded the curve a hundred yards ahead. I got in fast and crouched down in the back.

  We took back roads all the way to Jackson. We came to the airport by 8 A.M. I parked next to the terminal and changed in the car to some clean clothes, packed the camera equipment in my suitcase, since I didn’t want anyone noticing that I had a very good camera which could take very good pictures I might not have any right taking.

  I bought a ticket on the 8:40 plane to New York via Atlanta. I sat drinking coffee in the airport restaurant with Kirby till it was time to board.

  When the announcement came, she kissed me goodbye. “Shall I go home an’ make moan about the awful expense of the trip?” she asked. “An’ how you have to go all the way back to New York to get that damn thing fixed so you can go on with your project?”

  “Good idea.”

  “To hear is to obey.”

  “You’ll cry, then.”

  “Oh, I’ll cry.”

  It was time to board. I lugged on a perfectly good tape recorder. I could see her behind the big plate-glass window. She dug her fists in her eyes pretending to cry. With my forefingers I drew lines from the corners of my eyes downward.

  She laughed and waved.

  FASTEN SEAT BELTS. I did and leaned back, relaxed. For the first time in years I had someone who did the right thing at the right time. I could leave her in that dangerous town and go away with full confidence in her ability to handle anything that might come up.

  And although I don’t like flying, I found myself whistling as the jet gathered speed for the takeoff. The man on my left glared at me. Tough luck, buddy.

  33

  At 10 A.M. I was ringing Farr’s bell. I rang it five times. No answer. I held my finger on it until he spoke on the intercom.

  “Go away,” he said. “Or drop dead. Notice you have two alternatives.”

  “Dunne.”

  “Oh, the box Brownie man. Come up.”

  Upstairs there was someone in his bed. The sheet was pulled over her head, thus revealing her gold-painted toes. He noticed my gaze.

  “Last night we thought it was funny,” he said. “You know last nights. Your life is full of last nights.”

  “Not lately.” I gave him the three rolls.

  “How’d you make out, you think?”

  I pointed to the toes.

  He leaned over and tugged them. “Out,” he said.

  “I wanna stay.”

  “Out, honey.”

  “I’ll make coffee and cover my tiny ears with my paws, I promise.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I muttered.

  Farr became insistent. It finally got up, dressed, and went downstairs sulking. It wasn’t the same one I had seen there last time.

  “How come you always get the same type?” I asked.

  “You know any normal female who wants to spend her life with her mouth half open, licking her lips so they’ll photograph with highlights?”

  “Nope.”

  “So don’t ask.”

  “The brain that’s attached to that body isn’t very smart.”

  “It breathes,” he said, “leaving the mind unconfused. Enough for me. All I want. Want me to develop these right away?”

  “Yep.”

  “Will you make some coffee?”

  “Yeah. I’ll cover my tiny mouth while I do it.”

  I made coffee. I sat at the kitchen table drinking and staring at the white walls. I stood up and moved along sipping it. Like most bachelors, he had a quart of milk which had turned sour, like mine always did.

  I looked at the beautiful twelve-by-fifteen shot he had made a few years ago of a dark forest in winter with a white mist settling down over it. That was my favorite. The other one I liked was the shot next to it — a little girl into whose hands someone had just placed a baby fox. I smiled at her astounded, ecstatic expression.

  When he opened the door of the darkroom, I jumped.

  “Well?”

  “Not as perfect as I would have made them. But good.”

  I let out a sigh.

  “Can they be enlarged okay?”

  He nodded. I asked him to pick out the best.

  “How soon?”

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  He went back in again. I phoned the unlisted number Parrish had given me.

  “I’m back.”

  “How soon can you be here?”

  “Where are you?”

  “28 Battery Place.” That was near the southern tip of Manhattan.

  “An hour from now.”

  “I’ll give orders.”

  “One second. My name’s Nelson.”

  “Nelson. Right.”

  The time to begin laying a smoke screen was now. He hung up.

  I drank two more cups of coffee. I looked through Farr’s magazines. I memorized the two photographs on the wall I liked best. The chances were very good that I would never see them again.

  He came out with the enlargements.

  “A little grainy,” he said, “but seeing the available light you had to put up with, damn good.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “For making me chase that furry thing out of my bed, a couple drinks.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “If you see that nudnick having hot chocolate in the luncheonette downstairs, tell her to come back, will you? It takes her about thirty-five minutes to heat up the top of her spinal cord for the day.”

  “Her what?”

  “The top of her spinal cord. You aren’t listening carefully, Joe. Not like you. She doesn’t have a brain, unlike higher-developed animals like you and me.”

  I said goodbye, went down two flights, and went right back up. I said, “I’ve never been here, you haven’t seen me for a couple of months, and as far as that girl is concerned, make up some sort of a plausible lie if she asks about me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I paused.

  “Okay, Joe. I said okay.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I hung around a moment; although Farr didn’t know it, it was goodbye forever. I couldn’t let him know. So I finally said, “Well, Bryan, thanks.”

  She was sitting in the luncheonette. I went in and jerked my thumb upward.

  “Oooo,” she said. “I had three hot chocolates and then I found I didn’t have any money!”

  “Surprise.”

  “Yes. So can you please loan me sixty cents?”

  Such a pathetic little con.

  She misunderstood my look.

  “Like I’m short.”

  Yeah, baby. Short on everything. I gave the counterman a dollar bill. He gave me the change. I shoved the forty cents back. As I turned to go, I saw her pull the coins across the counter. I lifted her hand, shoved the coins back to the counterman, took her elbow, and escorted her outside. I pointed up to Farr’s studio.

  “Doncha ever talk?”

  The less she knew about me or my voice, the better. The more untypical a description of me she might give, the happier I would be.

  She started to say something, but I had just caught the eye of a cruising hackie. He pulled over. I got in. She started to say something again, but I had closed the door. I wasn’t going to give a destination that she might hear.

  She poked her head in.

  “Say, listen — ” she began. I pushed her head gently and rolled up the window. The hackie watched all this with interest. She began talking through the glass, but I said, “Let’s go.”

  “Where to, Jack?”

  “Downtown.”

  She began to bang on the window.

  He took off fast. Halfway down the block I turned around. She was still standing in the street with her hands cupped to her mouth and yelling. I waved. Women were always communicating with me through glass these days.

  “Forty Wall,” I said.

  When we got th
ere, I gave him a good tip. He deserved it for the jackrabbit start.

  34

  Parrish’s office wasn’t at Forty Wall. It was at 28 Battery Place, several blocks away to the west. I got out at Forty Wall, walked into the lobby and out the side entrance. The more misdirection the better, and what cabbies didn’t know didn’t hurt me.

  In five minutes I was pressing the elevator button. On the thirty-second floor I told the receptionist my new name for the day. She sent me right in. He met me at the door of his office and looked at the big manila envelope under my arm.

  He held out his hand.

  “Maybe you better not look,” I said. “Just give them to the dentists.”

  “Let’s have them.”

  I let him have the envelope. He opened it and slid the photographs onto his desk. That’s the worst part in a missing persons case — when the realization hits that all hope has to be abandoned. But Parrish took it very well.

  “I’m going to get in touch with the dentists this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll have my men fly up to Syracuse and to Boston. I’ll let you know by six tonight.”

  I went downstairs. Nothing to do till six. I sat on a bench in the Battery and watched the harbor traffic. I ate a hot dog. I took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty. I probably would never have the opportunity to see the lady again.

  I ate another hot dog on the way back. I sat among my fellow Americans, drinking the overwatered orangeade and listening to the mothers screaming at the kids trying to climb on the railing.

  I went ashore and watched a little kid at a drinking fountain squirting water at pigeons. I watched people with cameras taking pictures of each other. “Hold it,” they cried. “Smile!” The people smiled and exposed their teeth.

  I got up and turned my back to the happy tourists. I looked up at the mass of tall buildings across the park. It seemed impossible that there were streets down at their bases big enough for cars and people to wriggle through. Look at the buildings, Dunne. Play with those toy building blocks awhile and get out in one piece. If you’re lucky. And if I had a decent run of luck I’d get out. Hurry back, Parrish. Let’s get this goddam waiting over with.