by John Farris
“Stella won’t come home any more,” I said.
He continued to look at me. He took another spoonful of ice cream and held the spoon to his mouth long after he had swallowed. A sort of sorrow aged his face. He said a dirty word distinctly, like a soft moan. He put the spoon in the dish and unlatched the screen door. I went inside.
“She—” he began. He scowled, and looked at his feet. “Ah, hell,” he said bitterly. He looked at me. “Ah, hell, I don’t want no more ice cream.” He held the dish as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “This filthy neighborhood,” he moaned. “Always there’s somebody who don’t come home.” A lonely tear slid down his face. “I don’t know why I care,” he said. “It just means another vacant room. Just another vacant room.”
“I want to go upstairs,” I said.
He waved his hand and turned his back on me, walked away on skinny curved legs holding his dish of ice cream.
In her room the bed was neatly made, her few dresses precisely hung on the stretched wire. I turned on a small table lamp and shut the door. I went through the drawers of the old dresser carefully, looking for the gold compact which had meant so much to her. It should have been in a shoebox where she had kept odds and ends of jewelry and cosmetics, a few old pictures. I didn’t find it there, or anywhere else in the room.
There was a ballpoint pen on the dresser and under it a sheet of paper. I turned the paper over. On it were written two words:
Dear Bill
Beside the dresser was a small cardboard box littered with wadded tissues and a couple of old newspapers. I carried the box to the bed and emptied it. Among the tissues I found a crumpled piece of paper like the one on the dresser. Stella had written more on this sheet before throwing it away. I read the letter she had started to me.
Dear Bill: I know I have not been fair to you but I just could not help myself. I don’t think you could ever understand how I felt about Jimmy, because you don’t know what it’s like to grow up like we did. I’m a little scared now, because before long I think I’m going to find out who killed Mr. Smithell and framed Jimmy. Maybe I should talk to you first, because I might get into trouble. But I’ve gone this far alone so I might as well stick with it.
Bill, I think I love you. I’ve been mixed up lately, because of Jimmy. I don’t want you to think because of the things I’ve told you that what we did that night was just another trick for me. Maybe it’s too late and I’ve already made you hate me. Maybe I won’t mail this let
I smoothed out the letter as best I could and folded it, put it in my wallet. I went outside and shut the door. In a week the room would hold someone else. It would yield no mementos of the life that had gone before, caught for a while between the dull walls. But I had found just what I needed, a few words hastily written on a piece of paper, to make certain she would go on living for me.
MY LANDLADY, A THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD DIVORCEE WHO IS blonde, buxom and unapproachable, woke me up by grasping both my ankles and pulling me off the sofa.
“Get up, flatfoot,” she said cheerfully. She’s usually cheerful except when she’s had too much beer; then she tries to eat the bottle. “You’re late.”
“What for?”
She took my head in her hands and massaged it vigorously. “A man was calling you last night. Every fifteen minutes or so. When he didn’t get you he called me. He wants to see you.”
“What time—is it?”
“Five minutes to eight.”
“Stop beating on my head. I’m awake. Who was it?”
“Somebody named Marko.”
I stood up, yawning. She watched me with motherly interest. She has a big bright mouth that could be called generous, two dimples and sexy bruised-looking eyes, and a fine almost-plump body beginning to go to seed. For some reason or other her name is Jennifer.
“What did he want?”
She shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. He wanted to see you. Right away. Sounded a little bit excited, in a dreary sort of way.”
“Should have left me a note.”
“I did. It’s still on the door. Didn’t you see it?”
“I wasn’t seeing anything last night.”
“I’ve got some breakfast downstairs if you want it.”
“Don’t talk about food. I never want to eat again.”
She stared at me. She got up from the sofa and swung her hips a couple of times in the direction of the door. Over her shoulder she said, “Come talk to me when you’re feeling better. Or if you get to feeling worse. You can yell at me if it’ll make you feel better. It won’t matter to me. After what I took from Morris none of you bother me any more. You’re all big dumb bastards who don’t know anything about women.” She winked at me, and banged the door behind her.
I got Roxy’s number from my little book and called. He wasn’t in his office and he wasn’t in his apartment. I put the phone down with a feeling of irritation and went into the bath. I tried to shave. I kept seeing a dead girl in the mirror and my hands were shaky. There was a welling of terrible sorrow in my throat. I had lost my girl. Only I didn’t know she was mine. Not till after she had lain in the mud for two days with bullet holes in her stomach. I put my face back together with adhesive tape and went out to find Roxy. He had tried hard to reach me. Maybe he had something worth-while to tell me.
I tried the office, found the door locked. I could have used my key but I knocked, and waited. I had the feeling that someone was inside. I said, “Roxy.”
The door was opened slightly. Nathan Fisher looked out at me, freshly shaven and with his hair combed. His eyes were clear, but slightly puzzled. He stared at me almost apprehensively.
“I was looking for Roxy,” I said.
He nodded, as if our thoughts ran the same. “Yes,” he said. He was still considering something that obviously didn’t make sense to him. “Well, I guess you’d better come in.” He didn’t move from the doorway.
“Where’s Roxy?” I said.
He let me come in then. The blinds in the office were open, and the room was streaked with sunlight in shades of orange and yellow, like a violent abstract painting.
“Roxy’s over there,” Nathan said unnecessarily. I could see him.
Roxy was lying on the floor beside his desk, on his face. A fuzzy bar of sunlight crawled up his back like a caterpillar. His bright copper-toned hair was matted with dark blood. From where I stood it looked as though he had been shot in the back of the head.
Nathan made a sound like a nervous laugh. He looked helplessly at me and rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I’m going to be in trouble,” he said. “But I didn’t shoot him.”
“Who did?”
He was becoming more jittery by the second. “I don’t know. He was like that when I found—when I came.” His eyes went from me to Roxy’s body, and back. “I don’t know,” he said again, plaintively.
“How long have you been here?”
“A couple of minutes. That’s all. I just came, and—I just opened the door and walked in, and there he was.”
“And there he was,” I repeated softly. “The door was unlocked, I suppose?”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
“Touch anything?”
“No. I know better.”
I pointed to a chair. “Sit down,” I said. I went to Roxy and squatted beside his body, keeping an eye on Nathan. He was concentrating his efforts on lighting a cigarette. When he got it lit he looked around aimlessly for an ashtray, finally dropped the match on the rug after waving it to kill the flame. He gave me a couple of glances, looked morbidly at Roxy’s atavistic oil painting.
There had been nothing spectacular about Roxy’s death. He had been shot in the back of the head and that was all. As far as I could tell without moving him the bullet had come out just above the left eyebrow.
The telephone was on the floor beside him, the receiver on the hook. His body was between the phone and the desk and lying across the cord. Roxy had been dead f
or three hours or more, maybe. It probably would not have been too much trouble to locate the bullet. I didn’t want to bother. There were more interesting things to look at.
Roxy’s safe, for instance, built into the wall beside one of the white leather panels. The safe stood open.
And on the floor below it, a brown parcel—wrapping paper and ordinary twine. A parcel that might contain money.
I tore it open and the greenbacks cascaded. I carefully counted them. Just short of fifteen thousand dollars.
“My God,” Nathan gasped.
Taking out my handkerchief, I opened the middle drawer of Roxy’s desk. There was no gun inside. I looked in the other drawers; not there, either.
“What are you going to do?” Nathan said suddenly.
Still carrying the handkerchief, I went to the telephone. “I’m going to call a friend of mine,” I said, regretfully.
GULLIVER GAVE ME THE SAME KIND OF LOOK HE MIGHT GIVE to a dead fly in his soup. He wore an unpressed sport shirt and his hair was badly combed. He had taken too much sun lately, and his face and forearms were red. There was a sour grimace on his lips, as if he still tasted bad dreams.
He came into Roxy’s office and went to the body and stood very still looking down at it for almost a minute. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. When he was through looking at Roxy he walked around the office once. Then he said to Nathan:
“What time did you find him?”
“I got here about five after eight,” Nathan said. “I saw him as soon as I came into the office.” Nathan kept trying to twist his fingers off. He was about as rattled as anybody could get.
Gulliver nodded. He looked at me coldly, but said nothing. To Nathan he said politely, “What did you come to see Roxy about?”
“We were going to discuss some points about my campaign,” Nathan said. He wouldn’t look at Gulliver. He spoke smoothly, but not as if he was aware of what he said. “Roxy has made some contributions to my campaign fund.”
“Did you see anyone entering or leaving the office before you came in?” Gulliver seemed to be speaking by habit, as if he had little interest in knowing the answer. In a mad warped moment apart from the orderly progress of time, I had an image of two blind men earnestly describing a sunset to each other.
“No.”
“Was the office door closed?”
“Yes. But not locked.”
“What did you do when you found out he was dead?”
Nathan’s forehead wrinkled. “I . . . just looked at him for a few seconds. I didn’t understand, I guess. Then I heard somebody at the door.”
Gulliver lifted an eyebrow in my direction. I nodded. “It was me.”
“What did you want here?” Gulliver said. He was starting to come to life again, as he focused on me. He had a look of anticipation I didn’t like.
“Roxy wanted to see me. He called me several times last night but I wasn’t home.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t able to tell me when I got here.” Gulliver looked reflectively at his stiff wrist. His face was even stiffer. “You can go, Mr. Fisher,” he said. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t talk about this.”
Nathan looked grateful. “No, I won’t,” he said. He hesitated, then went out the door quickly.
Gulliver followed him, shut the door. He came back and stood in front of me. He looked at me for a while. I looked back, because with Gulliver standing in front of me there wasn’t much else to look at. When he smiled at me I was a little too slow to catch on and I couldn’t protect myself at all as he hit me. It was a short jab with Gulliver’s good right hand and I caught it right over the heart. I could feel each one of his knuckles. Even as I went down with the tearing pain spreading over my chest I knew he hadn’t hit me half as hard as he could.
I sat on the floor and held my hands over my heart.
“Ahhh,” said Gulliver.
“You . . . God, you dirty . . .”
“You killed Roxy,” Gulliver said with a hopeful gleam in his eye.
“Oh . . . give up. Listen, Gulliver. Why don’t you give up? You won’t find out who killed Roxy. You’re too scared of the truth. It would show you up for what you are.”
He took a deep breath.
“You were snooping around before I got here, weren’t you?”
I looked up at him. I watched him carefully. It wasn’t the funniest thing that ever happened to me, getting hit by Gulliver. It wasn’t the best laugh I’d ever had. He wasn’t going to do it again. If he took one step toward me I was going to shoot his goddam head off.
“Yeah. I saw some things. You’d see ’em too if you wanted to look.” I had to stop to cough. “Roxy was probably on the phone when he got it,” I said. “Maybe he had just picked it up. When he fell he took the phone with him. Then the killer put the receiver in place so Roxy wouldn’t be found so quick. Roxy had a .32 revolver in his middle desk drawer. It’s not there now. When you find the slug that killed him, I’ll bet it’s a .32. Here’s another thought for you. Roxy’s safe wasn’t cracked. So he must have opened it himself, if nobody else knew the combination. There’s a lot of money inside. He wasn’t killed for that. Roxy collected things, like doctored highballs. He might have had something in the safe that meant trouble for his killer. You just think about those things.”
“Get up,” Gulliver said. “I’m not going to hit you any more.”
“You bet you’re not,” I said. I got to my feet. “What are you going to book me on, Gulliver?”
He shrugged. His face was composed, but there was a steady look of hate in his eyes. “I’m not booking you,” he said. “I don’t want to mess with you. I don’t want to see you around. I know what you’ve been doing. You been effing around the Highway Patrol trying to find out who killed that Francis girl.”
“Stop talking about her.”
He shook his head in amazement. “The way you go around sticking up for trash like that. You ought to just forget about her. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a better p—”
“I just want to show you something,” I said. “I want to show you a letter she was writing me. She knew who was going to kill her.” I had the letter out of my wallet. “The same one who killed Smithell. . .”
Gulliver took the letter from me. He looked at it for about five seconds, contemptuously, then ripped it in half. I hit him in the face and felt the shock of it to my shoulder. He went down and lay on his back. Gulliver, with the crippled left hand and the jaw of glass. His eyelids fluttered and there was blood on his mouth. Somebody was breathing like a scared kid. It was me.
He tried to get up and didn’t have the strength. He fell backward against the wall, under the painting. He looked at me, his eyes cloudy but still full of hate and humiliation. He wiped at the drip of blood from his smashed lower lip.
Looking at him lying on the floor, too hurt to move his head or speak, or do anything but hate me with his eyes, I felt sick of myself for doing it, for showing him he wasn’t as tough as he needed to be.
I picked up the pieces of the letter from the floor and put them in my wallet. It was all I had. He should have known that.
His lips moved, and he talked to me, in a broken voice.
“You’re through in this town.”
He wasn’t telling me anything. I already knew it.
10
I DON’T know why I went back exactly. But I couldn’t stand being alone with myself and anything was better, even being close to the memory of her lying twisted in the mud with holes in her belly.
They had taken her away by then, of course. On the slope of the ravine birds hopped through the underbrush, and a squirrel posed on the path, watching me. The sun was hot on my face, and there was a smell of damp vegetation drying.
I didn’t have much money, but I was going to spend it all on a funeral for Stella. I had talked to Kenwick that morning. He had cleaned her up, washed her hair. He would comb her hair and put on a clean dress
, the best of the dresses from her room. I chose a plain coffin in dark red wood with a little silver trim, for the girl with the lonely uneven life, for what we might have had. There would be flowers. Those who lived at the rooming house were making up a collection. Phil Naar had sent a basket.
I walked down to the creek and sat on a large brown rock close to the sluggish water. I thought of Stella, the Stella I knew, the right Stella. I couldn’t remember her clearly, this Stella I knew, remember all the good things that made it easy for me to love her because I believed in her. There was a cloudiness in my mind that made me think of her in many beds, giving wantonly to many men. I tried to think of Leland Smithell with his hands on her. It was impossible. There was no picture.
Reason came slowly. It was impossible for Stella to have done that, with him or with many others, because it would have changed her just as surely as it had changed other girls from the rotting neighborhoods who lived too freely too young. My personal knowledge of her was too strong to let me believe in the other Stella she had told me about.
I didn’t try to think any more. It was all right now. I sat on the old rock in the sun and felt nothing, except a pleasant warmth in my stomach. The knots had loosened. I had the feeling that she was close to me, somewhere. I guess I was a little crazy. Not enough to worry about. Everybody is a little crazy sometimes.
Something else was coming, and I let the meaning gather slowly in my mind, a piece at a time. I wasn’t in a hurry any more. I would stay here until I knew.
It must be that she had lied to me that night in Smithell’s basement, even knowing what it would cost both of us. But she had lied anyway. I believed that. She lied so I wouldn’t find out why she was really there.
She couldn’t trust me. She couldn’t depend on anybody but herself, and because of that, she was shot.
A picture in my mind. Of Stella standing in the road above, her back turned, eyes shut in terror. Flashes of gunfire. Stella down, fingers spread over her stomach and side, rolling down the path while birds soared in fright and clouds covered the sun.