by P. N. Elrod
The bar light was on, but then Malone was busy washing up the champagne glasses in the sink there. I offered to help, but he said he had everything under control, so I told him to come to the main room with the cash drawer when he was done. He nodded absently. I made a quick trip up to the office to get the account books and a money bag. By the time I’d come down he’d finished and turned off the light. I wondered how long that would last.
Passing into the main room, I paused to look up at Lady Crymsyn’s portrait. It was still beautiful even after hundreds had seen her. For some reason I thought she’d be subtly changed for the attention as any woman might be changed.
Not Lady Crymsyn. Me. I’d had a lifetime in a few hours. No wonder I was weary, and even slightly disjointed in mind. There was also disappointment, sadness, and a supreme desire to avoid what I had to do next.
Putting it off, I studied the portrait. The color seemed to overwhelm the canvas. I’d never before noticed how many different shades of red the artist had used in the composition. He’d been invited to the opening, but begged off, having another engagement. I wanted him here to tell me why the reds were suddenly so prominent, when until now it had been the face of the woman that had dominated. Maybe it was a sign of great art for a single piece to be so many things at different times.
Or maybe it was my mind trying to get me to focus on another woman in a red dress. I really did not want to; the evening had gone so well.
Malone was at the far bar, already sorting through the wads of cash he’d taken from the club’s registers. There was a huge pile of ones, fives, and tens, a lesser, but still most respectable stack of twenties and fifties, and even a lovely collection of C-notes. I was pleased by the take, but not nearly as much as I’d have been had Lieutenant Blair not strolled in with his news and clippings.
Seated at one of the booths, Malone and I counted through the money, recorded it, wrapped rubber bands around the paper, and sealed the coins into sturdy bank envelopes, all ready to deposit. I deemed that this would be a task for which I would never grow weary.
“That’s all then,” he said, folding the last one shut.
“Not really.”
He gave me an inquiring look. “Have I missed something?”
I was too well aware of the vast emptiness of the place. The fans still hummed, gently circulating air, clearing out the last of the smoke. Was it also drawing away the music and laughter that had filled the room hardly more than an hour ago?
Suppressing another sigh, I pulled out the now rather crumpled wire photos and put them on the table between us. “There’s some things missing here. I want you to fill in the spaces.”
For a moment, as he stared without comprehension at the sheets, I had the stabbing hope that I’d been wrong. That Escott’s chance comment about it being an unholy mess had triggered a false conclusion.
But only for a moment. Malone’s face went utterly white, and he slumped back in the padded seat of the booth. He released a long sigh of his own that sounded alarmingly like a death rattle. He looked dead, a dead man with only his stricken gaze to show that someone was still trapped inside the unresponsive body.
17
I unlocked the liquor storage, got a bottle and glass, and took them to the table. I filled the glass and slid it across to Malone.
“Drink.” The old-fashioned remedies are usually the best.
Some of the frozen horror leached out of his eyes, and he made an abortive move toward the booze. His hand was shaking too much to lift it to his lips; he had to bend close to the table to prevent spillage. He sipped down a good portion, then turned away, giving in to a coughing fit. Obviously a man not used to hard spirits even if he dealt with them daily.
Tic. “Wh-what are you going to do?” he asked. It sounded like someone else was using his voice.
He’d taken it for granted that I knew everything, and this lack of denial damned him completely. I’d only had a strong certainty before, diluted slightly by the weak hope that I was wrong. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
“B-but—”
“Just talk to me. I think you need to. Get some more of that into you, then tell me everything from the start.”
He meekly obeyed, draining off half the glass.
“Who are you really?” I asked.
Lips trembling, but he mastered himself. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, trying to put himself in order after I’d smashed him down with a sledgehammer. “My real name is Robert Tielli. I’m—I was—Walter’s older brother, Norrie’s uncle.”
Well, that explained his motive.
“And you did it?” No need to specify what.
“Yes.”
“Go on. How’d it start?”
“God, you might well say when he married her. They were young, he was only twenty, but she was pretty and they were happy enough. I was his best man at the wedding. He did carpentry, house construction, made a good living at it. I had the store—that much of what I told you was true. He worked there between jobs. And he gambled.”
“What about the hot checks?”
“True, all true. I got the blame for them. I was angry with him, disappointed, but there wasn’t much I could do. He was still my brother, and if I’d shifted the blame to him, who would support his family while he was in jail?”
“You?”
He shook his head. “Helen didn’t like me. She came to know about my… my life, and it disgusted her. Walter just ignored it. I wish to God she could have done so as well. She was afraid to leave me around the children. I know there are men out there that… I’m not one of them, but she refused to understand.”
“So you took the blame for the bad checks and went to jail.”
“Not gladly, but yes. I thought it better for me to go instead. If I’d only known.”
“What happened?”
“Walter was killed, not in a car accident, but on the job, some falling beams. He never woke up. The prison wouldn’t let me out for even one day to attend his funeral. Helen never wrote me afterward. Never told me what she was doing. If only she had just said one word.”
If only. The saddest words ever put together by helpless regret.
“I would have found some way to help her, help his children. They were my blood, too, all that I had left of my brother. I loved them as though they were my own. And then she… she…”
He had to stop. To break down. To release years of grief and rage and might-have-beens. It was awful to watch, to feel. The force of all that stored-up pain rolled over the table at me like a physical thing. If he’d been a woman, I’d have known what to do; but he was a man, and we suffer alone without the comfort of touch. I found a stack of napkins behind the bar. His handkerchief was inadequate to the task of all those tears. Feeling awkward, I put them within his reach, sat, and waited him out.
Gradually his sobbing trailed off. He scrabbled in near blindness for the napkins, savagely wiping his eyes, clearing his nose. He showed no embarrassment for himself; he looked very tired, though, very old. The thin lines that defined his otherwise youthful face had deepened and stretched.
“I was in prison when she did it. It was only later I found out how she’d tried to put the children in an orphanage. There was just a month to go before my release. I would have gladly taken them in, or found another home for them. But I didn’t know. Dear God, if only I’d had some hint, but she’d cut me off, and there were no other relations of mine she could turn to. She’d said I was sick, perverted. That I was sick.”
His throat clogged. He sipped more of his drink, coughing again.
“So rather than have a sick deviant like myself care for them, or at least help support them, she preferred them dead. What went through her mind? Did she feel anything, or have even a second’s remorse? Was she insane by then? By the time I was out, she was gone. All I had was speculation, the wondering why, the not knowing.”
Hers was an idiot’s cruelty, I thought, trying to connect her
horrific actions to that bland studio portrait that had come from the cops. “We want to know the why of it, to know how anyone could do such things, but there’s no way any decent soul could or should understand. If we did, we might become like her.”
He puffed out a small bitter laugh. “Oh, but I do understand. I did. I turned into her. For one night.”
“Did you adopt Norrie?” I asked, to keep the flow going in the-right order and interrupt his staring into space. Whatever he saw there had to be ugly.
He blinked at being drawn back. “I tried. I thought I’d have a chance since I was her uncle, but they turned me down because of my jail record—and other things. She was in an orphanage. A couple was all set to adopt her. They were probably nice, kind people, but she was all I had left of Walter. I couldn’t let her go to strangers, so I took her away.” He grimaced. “I know it was kidnapping, and there was a terrific hue and cry. They compared it to the Lindbergh baby.”
“What, you put a ladder to a window?”
“There was no need. I waited until the children were on the playground. I wore overalls like the orphanage janitors and just called to her. She knew her uncle Robert and came running over. Then I just walked out right to the train station with her in my arms. We were miles away by the time she was missed.
“I’d hocked or sold everything in the store I could for travel money. I trimmed her hair and dressed her in boy’s clothing. At that age it’s hard to tell a boy from a girl except by their clothes. She still had bandaging around her throat. The papers said she’d been stabbed, but that was wrong. Helen had drawn the knife across just like she’d done with… with…”
He looked ready to break down again. I refilled his glass.
“It’ll make me drunk.”
“You need it.”
He trembled still, but was better able to hold things in control. This time he merely sipped, then blew his nose. “I covered the bandages with a high-necked sweater, gave her a teddy bear instead of a doll to play with, and no one noticed us.”
“Then you came to Chicago?”
“Not at first. I’d taken a train to Buffalo, and posted letters to the orphanage and to my parole officer.”
“Why?”
“I thought they might like to know Norrie was safe. I gave them my reasons for taking her, and that we’d be starting a new life, that I would treat her as my own daughter, that she would be all right. Perhaps it was foolish, but I didn’t want them thinking she was dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“And a Buffalo postmark on the letter might shift their search for you to Canada?”
Tic.. “Yes. The way I wrote and worded the letters hinted at it. I’d planned it all very carefully. It was gratifying to read about it a few days later in the papers. We were in Chicago by then and I had new identities for us—I learned how to do that in prison, false birth certificates, a driver’s license. That’s when we became the Malones, little Norrie and her recently widowed father. I wore a black armband. People deferred to it, were kind, and out of tact did not ask very many questions.”
“Why Chicago?”
“I’d spoken to that Dixon fellow, who was from here. To give him credit, he was as horrified by what she’d done as anyone. He’d had no inkling that she would do what she—he said she sometimes asked him about Chicago, so it seemed as good a place as any to go.”
“What’d you do to him?”
Malone—and I still thought of him as Malone—blinked surprise. “Why, nothing. He’d been her motive, but nothing more. He was a small, stupid man, with a small, stupid life. They had much in common for that, but her actions were quite beyond his limits.”
“So you went looking for her?”
“Not realistically. I can’t explain, but I had an idea, a premonition, a wish, perhaps, that it wasn’t over. That she and I would meet again. Every night I prayed for it, even though God must have known what I wanted to do once I caught up with her.”
“So you found a job bartending?”
“Not at first. Prohibition was still on, and if there was a raid on the speak, I’d be in danger of arrest, but there just weren’t any jobs open elsewhere. I did what work I could, but never for very long. Sooner or later someone would object to me, and I’d get fired. Things got bad enough to take the risk, and I found work at the Ace. I’d been told there would be no raids there, that Nevis had influence with the police. It proved to be true.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And a lucky choice on my part.”
“You found Helen was working for him, too.”
“It was like God had answered my prayers. I could hardly believe it, nearly fainted on the spot. She’d changed her hair, had grown up a bit, was more sophisticated, more alive, as though she’d turned into a completely different woman. But I still knew her the instant she walked in. I’d not changed that much, so I kept out of sight. She seemed very friendly with Nevis.”
“Why did you choose… that method to…”
He sighed. “All I wanted was some isolated place to take her so we could talk. I’d heard the waiters gossiping about Lennet’s speak being closed up and likely to remain that way. That had only happened a month earlier. So I checked it out, and it was perfect. No one would hear her in that basement. I went to a hardware store and got an eyebolt and a hand drill, some other things. She’d have to be tied up, you see.”
I nodded once.
“I called in sick that night and waited outside for her. She and Rita would often come in together, but leave separately. I didn’t know what their business was with Nevis—it didn’t seem a good idea to ask. Around midnight she left, heading for the El at the end of the street. I got to her before she could reach it, showed her a knife I had, told her to be quiet. She seemed too dumbfounded to react.”
“And she just went along with you?”
“She did after I made her drink what I had in my flask. It kept her quiet, a little woozy, but she was able to walk. I brought her here, brought her to the basement, and tied her up to that eyebolt. After that, it was only a question of waiting until she shook off the morphine. Hours, it turned out. Gave me plenty of time to think. And it occurred to me during those hours that I would have to find a way to conceal her body. If it were found and identified, then the police might begin looking for me again. I was a man with a clear motive, after all.”
“You always planned to kill her?” So far, he was leading up to an inarguable case for premeditation, which would put his neck in a noose for certain.
“Yes, I did,” he said, pulling the lever to make the trapdoor drop.
I felt heavy inside, my guts all turned to lead.
“I didn’t know how I would kill her, though. I had the knife, and though there was a certain justice in cutting her throat, it would be too quick. Then it came to me that all I had to do was keep her right where she was. I found loose bricks throughout the basement, not nearly enough, but they were a start so I could calculate how many more were needed. By the time she fully woke up I had it all worked out.”
“What did she say to you?”
“Absolutely nothing. Just stared at me like some ox at the slaughterhouse. It was a different face than the one she showed at the club. Her eyes were… empty, as though her soul had gone, leaving behind only a husk. This was the face of the woman who murdered my nephew. This creature—thing—had killed him. I tried talking with it, wanting to know why. But she wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t say one word. I spent half the day trying to—”
Easy enough to see the two of them, the dank basement, the red glitter of her evening gown being picked up by his flashlight or lantern, and him throwing questions at her, his frustration mounting in measure to her silence.
“All I got from her, all I got was—” He had to pause, his control in danger of slipping again. “She wanted to know when I would let her go, so she could go home. That’s the only time she spoke.” A truly awful grimace distorted his face as he fought more tears and rage. “She didn’t seem to be aware
of what was happening to her, of her situation. She didn’t even seem to be afraid. I was not bloody justice come to exact terrifying retribution; I was merely an inconvenience to her schedule.
“That’s what the children had been to her. A problem she had to get rid of because it interfered with her pleasures.
“She could have simply walked away from them, abandoned them. It would have been wrong, but they would have eventually been found and cared for. Instead, she chose to kill them. She chose. I came to see that as I faced her. She wasn’t insane, she was evil.”
“Did you think of turning her over to the cops?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“They’d have just sent her back to that asylum, and she could have escaped again. She wasn’t a smart woman, but she was very cunning, like a rat is cunning. She would have found a way out again because being locked away would inconvenience her. Besides, they might have found me and taken Norrie away. I couldn’t bear that. So, I made a choice of my own.
“I saw to it she was securely tied down and gagged, then went to buy bricks and mortar. It took a few trips to bring it all in—how my arms ached—but I’d made my decision, and went through with it. Again, I don’t think she really understood what I was doing. She just watched, not saying a word, but by then I was able to ignore her the same as the rats in the building ignored us. I built up the courses—Walter had taught me a bit about construction—and they went up very fast.
“If just once, once, she had said she was sorry, said anything, I might have stopped.”
“Might?”