The Second Pulp Crime

by Mack Reynolds

  “Takes all the arsenic in hell to poison an arsenic-eater!”

  BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Bryce Walton

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, February 1965.

  The radio was trying to scare people again. This time it kept talking about desperate killer convicts just escaped from nearby Bedford Prison. Lilian turned it off, but then the dead silence was worse. The silence had been getting worse out there by the lake, especially at night. Every night a little worse and further away from everything.

  But thanks for the telephone, she thought, and started to call Gloria, but didn’t. She remembered that Martin didn’t like coming home, catching her wasting time on the phone. Although what she was supposed to do with all the time out here she never quite knew.

  Nervously she rearranged flowers on the living room table for the tenth time. Her hand was unsteady as she checked her wristwatch again, then lighted the tall candles on the ends of the table. She looked with timid self-satisfaction at the way the birthday cake was illuminated, with Martin’s presents beside it ready for the little candles to be lit. She had baked and decorated the cake, and thought there was a genuine artistic flair in the way she had squeezed on the delicate red-frosted letters, “Happy Birthday, my Darling Husband.”

  She hoped fervently that he would be pleased. It was one of those nights when he would really have to be demonstrative and a bit warm, and she looked forward to it. She ran to the mirror down the hall and dabbled behind her ears the perfume Gloria had brought her. Then she turned away from the mirror. Maybe witchcraft wasn’t enough now. Probably wasn’t anything that could make things the way they had once seemed with Martin, or make things the way they might have been, or were supposed to have been…

  She heard the familiar squealing, skidding stop of the big car in the driveway. She was fluffing at her hair as she ran to the front door. Then he seemed to fill up the room as he took three long strides past her, and she closed the door.

  She stared at his massive shoulders. He always seemed like a stranger when he came back, even though the dark suit, crew-cut and thick neck were so familiar. He swung his briefcase into his left hand, and hooked Lilian with his right arm in a casual recognition of her presence.

  “Happy birthday, darling.”

  His face seemed heavier and thicker, with a slight bluish spread of beard, as he nodded, kissed her quickly and looked toward his study. “Busy birthday, you mean. Here, look what the guys got me.” He showed her a watch. She blinked at it blurredly, hating it in a deep secret place. “It’s lovely,” she said.

  “Someone’s always buying me a watch.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t want to be late for one of your big business conferences or anything like that…” She stopped talking and just murmured vaguely as Martin checked his watch and started toward his study. Then he stopped, as Lilian made a sort of small, whining sound that she was unable to control, for the anxious hours of preparation, candles, cake, presents, bottle of sparkling Burgundy, and all that she had dared imagine might happen.

  Martin swerved over to the table. “Cake and everything. You’re nice, Lily. It’s a nice cake. It really is. But I can’t eat any. My diet, you remember my diet?”

  “Yes, but I thought that just tonight, because…”

  “What’s this?” He grabbed up the bigger package and began muttering angrily at the ribbons.

  “Gloria dropped it off early this afternoon.”

  Martin swore and ripped the ribbons off, then grinned as he took out a pair of hedge shears, a little garden spade and a long gleaming trowel. “Tools to work my little garden? What a stupid gag! When does she think I’m around to play the suburban clown? Or maybe she thinks I’m going to retire.” He dropped the tools on the table and grabbed up Lilian’s painfully selected gifts. He tore off ribbons and delicate paper and dropped them over the table and floor. Shaving lotion, talc, a set of gold cuff links, and a tie clasp to match. He put them by the garden tools. “Thanks, honey. Very thoughtful. But why the cuff-links? You know I never use them. I always lose things like that. It’s a pretentious waste. Well, it’s the thought that’s important, honey.” He looked at his watch again, gave her a quick kiss, and hurried into his study. She followed him. He was dialing with one hand and jerking at his necktie with the other. He frowned as he watched Lilian stand in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Lily. I feel like a rat-fink, but it just has to be. I’ve got to get right over to Great Falls. I mean this is really urgent, and now I’ve got to call Brown.”

  “Larry,” she said. She leaned over a little. She felt as if she were going to be sick.

  “What can I say, honey? It’s a big thing, and a few hours could lose us the whole deal.”

  She pushed away from the wall and moved toward him.

  “…right, that’s right, Doug. I’ll be over in an hour. Sure, am I in the habit of being late? Nobody ever keeps Josephson waiting… Right, old buddy, bye.”

  He looked up and winked. He winked at Lilian so she knew he didn’t really see her face, or have any idea how she felt. Then he jumped up, squeezed her arm and ran into the bedroom. Lilian walked very slowly back into the living room toward the birthday cake. She stared at it until the candle flames began acting strangely on her eyes. Then she heard footsteps, and Martin opening the door. She turned. He was a thick featureless shadow silhouetted against the porch light as he stood there with the door open. “Sorry, honey, but we’ve been pushing this deal for months. We’ve got to close it out tonight.” He picked up his briefcase.

  “But, Larry,” she said almost inaudibly. “We haven’t…”

  “I could have called you about it, but this chance just came up. Come on, Lily, this is how our business works. You can’t expect things to work out the way you want it all the time.”

  She forced herself to move toward him.

  “Be a good girl while I’m gone,” he said, and grinned. “Give Daddy a big kiss and wish him luck on his venture.”

  But she clutched at his arm. “Larry, when will you be back?”

  “Soon as I can,” he said with a touch of irritation. “Okay?”

  Then Lilian stood looking at the closed door and listening to the car roaring away and fading down the road. She stood there looking at the empty picture frame of the door for a long time, hearing the car long after there was really nothing to hear. The hurt and anger gave way to fear, the fear of loss and abandonment. It was the same fear she had felt as long as she could remember. It was the same way she had felt when her mother used to go away, and leave her alone, too small to do anything but wonder what she had done wrong…

  She walked around the candlelit room several times, then went back to the window and looked out. The place in town had been much better, alone at night. The lights had been like a mirror so you at least imagined that you saw something come back when you looked out.

  She went from the window to the mirror over the bureau and searched herself in the clear, uncompromising glass. He must meet a lot of young, very desirable, glamorous girls. Of course he did. Chic, slim, lovely, and independent. They could meet him on his own level, while she…

  She picked up a bottle of perfume and started to throw it straight into the mirror, but a face appeared there in back of her own. Then she moved enough to see that it was a real face, and a real body, because it was too frightening and monstrous to be imagined or made up by anyone, by her, least of all.

  He was big. One bloody arm hung loosely. His hair was short and bristly on a bony head, and he hardly saw a face at all, but only bright, black, hungry eyes looking, looking at her, looking all over, inside, through her, exploring, feeling, speculating.

  Lilian turned, rigid with fear, and saw him directly, with a slightly different and more shocking perspective, standing in the entrance to the kitchen. She opened her mouth.

  “Don’t scream,” he said softly
. “That would be too bad.”

  She closed her mouth. And he kept looking at her. She didn’t really want to scream now anyway. She wanted to get outside into the dark and run, run and run and run until she fell down and she no longer cared about anything. She had done that once, and it had been a wonderful relieving thing.

  “What do you want, please?” she finally managed to ask.

  He was still looking at her, and then he showed his teeth in a grin, like a primitive, grinning mask. “You’re cute,” he said. “You’re exciting. Like a clean pink doll.”

  He looked into the study, into the bedroom, into the guest room, and into the closets. Once Lilian ran and reached the front door, but he got there before she could open it and twisted her arm cruelly. She was pulled hard against him, wincing. And she could smell his sweat, the sour odor of swamp.

  He didn’t let her go. She stopped struggling and turned her head away. He sniffed at the perfume behind her ear. “Hey, you smell good.”

  “What do you want?” she asked again.

  “Don’t yell or cause trouble.” He raised his left arm. “I got to get cleaned up and this arm fixed.” She gasped when she saw the wound up close. She felt compassion and she wanted to ease the pain he must be feeling. She forgot who he probably was and what that could mean. He might have been anything injured, any man or even an animal.

  “It looks bad,” she said.

  “It isn’t good.” He saw the bottle of wine and walked toward it. “Gordon messed it up. Jumpy and screaming like that, just because he got a thorn in his foot. Then he got a lot worse.”

  He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Lilian. She shook her head. He drank his, poured another and drank that, poured two or three more and gulped them like water. Then he looked at the candles, the presents and the birthday cake as if he hadn’t really noticed them before. “Waiting for somebody?”

  “I—why yes…”

  “But the presents are opened already.”

  “My husband was here. It was his birthday. Well, he had to leave abruptly—yes, abruptly, and—on business, you know.”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning and drinking more wine. “Business.”

  “But he’s coming back soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Oh—I don’t know. He just said soon.”

  He stepped quickly to the window and looked out. Then he went along lowering all the blinds. He also locked the door. When he went down the hall to look into the kitchen again, Lilian ran for the telephone in the study. She was dialing when the man’s hand closed on her upper arm like the jaws of a trap, and she felt herself hurled out of the chair and onto the floor. She stayed on her knees looking up at him. She tried to get up onto her feet several times, but couldn’t. The weakness moved in her legs like a strange perverse force of her will.

  He ripped out the phone cord, then he lifted her up. His voice was surprisingly gentle and his breath was hot against her face. “I wish you wouldn’t try anything like that. I’ve been in Bedford rotting a long time. I’ll do anything not to go back, including die. The cops are swarming all over the area, and their radio cars are hooked up everywhere over ten states. I’ve got to get this arm fixed, and some different clothes.”

  He winced a little, then forced her, with his one good arm, back into the living room. He poured two more glasses of sparkling Burgundy. He handed one glass to her. “Drink it,” he said, and forced it into her hand. “I said drink it. You’ll feel more like working on this wing of mine.”

  She drank it as he looked toward the kitchen, then the bathroom down the hall. “Where do you keep the stuff? The knives?”

  “I’ll get the stuff,” she said. She drank the rest of the wine and put the glass on the table.

  He held her arm and walked with her into the kitchen. “Bet you’re handy with a kitchen knife and…”

  She was carried away by the operation. She forgot the setting and the characters. Her only concern was the arm. The kitchen light glared down into his face and on his arm. A human being was in pain, badly wounded. Infection was a threat. A wounded human being needed her, and she had skill and a special touch with some things.

  His face, turned away from her, had no expression.

  She dressed the wound and then she went back into the living room and drank the rest of the wine. When she turned, he was standing watching her through the candlelight at the end of the table, his arm tied up to his chest with gauze and tape. “You’ve got nerve,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Lilian.”

  “Mine’s Tony Lyster. You’re good with first-aid. You’re like a pro. So what are you doing out here?”

  “I got married.”

  He took hold of her hand. “Where’s the lucky busybody you like to take care of?”

  “He had to leave abruptly. On business.”

  “Oh sure, you told me.”

  Her head was spinning. She felt so light, light and floating, light and swirly. Her legs felt weak, but she wanted to laugh a little. She moved carefully into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of bourbon. He took the bottle, and grinned as he poured some in two glasses.

  “You like yours straight?” she asked.

  “Right now I’m not a bit particular. You want yours straight?”

  “I’m not particular either—particularly—”

  He poured her another shot, then another. Their glasses clicked and she giggled.

  “Here’s to us,” he said.

  …she was floating around and around the living room through the wavering candle flames, and drifting through the warm and perfumed atmosphere. A strange elation bubbled and fizzed. It frightened her but she had no desire to make it go away. The light went around in churning waves of frothing colors and then went out.

  Circles of pale light kept going round when she opened her eyes. A door squeaked. She screamed when he came toward her from the bedroom. “Larry—Larry!”

  He grinned down at her. “How could you mistake me for Mr. Martin? Oh, the clothes. Well, how do I look?”

  He had put on Larry’s slacks, shirt, one of his dark ties. Everything seemed to fit splendidly, including a pair of Larry’s shoes. He had the checked sport coat draped over his shoulders.

  He pulled her up. She swayed dizzily. “You can drive,” he said.

  “Drive?”

  “The car, the one in the garage, baby. You drive, and I’m going to be Mr. Martin. Just call me Larry. I got some of his identification here. And your driving his car will cinch it. I’ll clear those road blocks, and then I’ll be gone.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re getting out too, baby.” Her voice rose higher.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe you want to make a break too. Let’s go.”

  She sat down heavily, weakly, and looked toward the darkened window. A dog barked somewhere off toward the highway. A beetle banged again and again against the glass. A car honked, but that sound carried a long way in the might. The candles were low and they sputtered now.

  Come back, Larry, come back now and help me, please come back and help me now, Larry darling…

  “Get up, baby,” the convict said. “Even if you don’t want to go, you’re going. I need you. You might as well try to make it easy on yourself.”

  She leaned her head back and looked up at him.

  “You don’t have anything to lose,” he said. “Soon as I’m through the roadblocks, I’ll let you out. You can tell them anything you want to. Tell them I had a gun on you, and you had to do whatever I said.” He laughed. “Anything you tell them about me they’ll believe, baby. Make it good. The worse the better. Just tell them Big Tony Lyster called, and you’ll be okay.”

  She heard the familiar squeal and skid outside, and she sat up suddenly, stiffly. Her head jerked aro
und as the convict backed away into the far, shadowed corner of the room, and she saw the blueish glint of the gun in his hand.

  “That’s him. I mean it’s Larry, it’s my…”

  “Let him in,” the convict said.

  Her body ached as she got to the door and unlocked it. Now the convict looked like an animal, crouched in the corner. His eyes shone. “Careful now,” he whispered.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said.

  “Maybe not. I got nothing against him, yet. All I know about him is, he’s got good taste in clothes. Maybe he’s smart. If he is, he won’t get hurt.”

  “He’s smart,” she said faintly.

  Martin walked into the sputtering candlelight, and the smell of spilled bourbon and burned wax. He looked tired and irritated. He stared at the cake carved up with the trowel, the empty wine glasses, the half-emptied bourbon bottle, and cigarette butts on the table and on the floor.

  “What’s this, Lily?” He started toward her where she stood rigid in the shadows. She wanted to fall into his arms. “Lily, what the deuce has been going on?” He dropped the briefcase. “Don’t tell me Gloria’s been here? Must have been some party. I never knew Gloria to…”

  She swayed. Something painful pulled and twisted at her face. Larry’s face blurred, and she realized that he was laughing.

  “Don’t laugh, Larry.”

  “Yeah, stop laughing,” Tony Lyster said. Martin turned stiffly and saw the convict and the gun on the other side of the table, and in the fading candlelight the color went out of his face.

  “I had myself a party, buddy. I got a birthday coming up anyway in a couple of weeks. I figured what the hell, I’ll have my celebration tonight. You know, just in case.”

  Martin’s voice was strained. “The police are staked out just down the road. They stopped me.”

  The convict came around and pointed the gun close to Martin’s stomach.