Man Drowning

by Henry Kuttner

  Number eight was well polished brass on a brown door halfway back on the second floor. Above the brass eight was a round peephole filled in with fancy grillwork. I rang the bell. After a minute the peephole opened and a black eye with mascara on the lashes looked out at me inquiringly.

  “Sherry there?” I asked. “I’m Nick Banning.”

  A voice said, “Oh, oh,” and the eye got wider.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Where’s Sherry?”

  “Wait a sec,” the voice said. The peephole closed. I waited. I could hear muffled voices from inside, one protesting and arguing, the other too low to catch much of. Then the peephole opened again and the eye inspected me.

  “Look,” the voice that went with it said, a little nervously. “This is going to sound crazy, but don’t blame me. I’m just the mouthpiece. Sherry’s here. But she says she won’t come out. She says not to let you in. She says if you want to talk to her, we’ve got a telephone in here. Call her up. That’s what she says.”

  I looked at the round hole, the grill and the eye without saying anything.

  “That’s what she says,” the voice repeated. “Don’t blame me.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “So?”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said.

  I turned around and went downstairs without looking back. I could feel the black eye boring between my shoulder blades all the way.

  The telephone booth was full of cigarette smoke from the fellow before me. I fanned it out as I dialed the number listed under Rita Ferelli. Sherry’s voice answered on the first ring. She sounded very calm.

  “What’s the idea, anyhow?” I said.

  “What are you doing in Phoenix, Nick?”

  That stopped me. I waited a second or two.

  “I got a job,” I told her. “Forget about that. What’s the idea of treating me like a—a—”

  “You know what the idea is, Nick.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “You’d better quit that job you got and go on east,” she said. “That was the way we left it Monday night. It suited me that way, Nick. Not this way. I don’t want to see you any more.”

  “You don’t have to. If you mean it. But do you? After Monday night?”

  She hesitated.

  “That didn’t mean a thing.”

  “Sure?”

  “Wait a minute.” She must have put her hand over the phone, because I got a muffled booming in my ear, her voice making sounds above it I couldn’t understand. When she took her hand off again I got the black-eyed girl’s voice, far back, saying, “Okay, kid, take it easy,” and the closing of a door. And when Sherry spoke I knew by the changed pitch in her voice, the different feel of it, that she was alone in the room.

  “Listen, Nick,” she said. “Get this clear. Monday night was—like the old days, when you were in the Army. Because living together and sleeping together are two different things. Some people can have both. The lucky ones. We can’t. It used to be all right, when you were in the Army. Then all we did was sleep together. But afterward—it didn’t work any more. Monday night it was like the war, Nick. I knew you were shipping out. I knew you were going east. You said so. And I was glad to see you.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “That doesn’t matter a bit. Don’t make any mistake about it, Nick. The other night—I wanted it to happen. But only because I knew I could afford to let it happen. Because you said you were leaving the next day. If I hadn’t felt sure of that, I wouldn’t have let myself risk anything at all.”

  “It was a risk, eh? Why? Because Gavotte might find out?”

  I heard her breath catch a little over the wire.

  “Did Ed tell you that?” she asked me.

  I counted up to five, slowly and carefully.

  “Want the whole story?” I said. “It started Monday. When we went for a ride. After that, I decided to take a Phoenix job. I figured you were on the loose, and…no strings. So I took the job. This afternoon I came into town, and I read the paper. I didn’t place Gavotte right away, till it mentioned the Green Lantern. Then it clicked. It still didn’t mean a thing, except I remembered meeting the guy Monday night. I wanted to see you and tell you I was staying. So I went over to your apartment house, where I let you out night before last, and the landlady gave me your new address. She didn’t know a Miss Knox. But when I said Sherry, then she called you Mrs. Gavotte. Up till then, I didn’t even guess there was a tie-up.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it? Were you married to him?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, in a tired voice. “It’s true. But we weren’t married.”

  “Well, what was it with Gavotte? Living together or sleeping together?”

  “You wouldn’t—oh, never mind. Ed was a good fellow, that’s all. He never tried to push me. You wouldn’t understand about that. He paid the rent, bought me a few things, but—he never tried to pay me.”

  “So what was the attraction? His bright blue eyes?”

  “The job. I got my salary and I got tips. The tips were the thing. They mounted up. You’d be surprised. And the house drinks, the setups. The money angle was separate. I lived with Ed, but I had my own job and made my own money.”

  “But you went out with me Monday night.”

  “All right. I missed you. I missed the good things about you. I tell you, I forgot the bad things.”

  “How do you know they’re still there—the bad things? A guy can change. Can’t you believe that’s possible? Hell, I’ve got a job. Didn’t you notice?”

  “You’ve had jobs before. You never kept any of them.”

  “So I was aiming too high. I know now it isn’t the job in particular. It’s the idea of having it and keeping it.”

  “What kind of a job have you got this time?”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. Something like a straw boss. I write letters and keep accounts, and I fix the stove when it gets out of order. It’s a house outside of town a ways. A man and his wife, and a couple of Mexicans. De Anza. Know them?”

  “I know where their place is. I don’t know them.”

  “Well, it’s a job. I’m going to keep it. I won’t quit till something better comes along. I want to be near you, Sherry.”

  “I don’t want you near me.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What of?”

  “Of your acting just the way you’re acting now. Push, always push. I give in on one little thing, like sitting down to have a drink with you, and—” she made a clicking sound with her tongue, a sound that might mean despair or anger.

  I grinned at myself in the dim reflection of the glass wall. I got out a cigarette one-handed and lit it, blowing smoke into a tall square cube the size and shape of the glass booth, with me in the middle of it. With me and Sherry’s voice, pulled out to a thin thread of sound.

  “Well, what are you going to do, then?” I asked.

  “I’ll wait. See what happens. Things are all mixed up now. The Green Lantern may open again. Ed owned it. I suppose somebody will inherit. Maybe they’ll sell it. I can’t count on anything.”

  I was wondering what I should say about Gavotte. It was a queer situation. I wondered what I’d say if I really knew only what I’d read in the paper, and I still couldn’t tell. The situation was too damned queer. Do you offer condolences to your ex-wife because her lover has just been killed?

  I knew one thing, though. I felt good about it. I felt fine. I doubled up my fist and tapped the telephone booth lightly with the tips of my knuckles. Gavotte was dead, and it was murder, and I was the murderer. That felt wonderful. It hadn’t been murder at the time he’d died, but it was murder now. Murder after the fact. I’d do it again. I’d like to do it again. I wished there was some way to go back and play the whole thing over, only this time maybe I’d be the one with the broken bottle in my fist, and ma
ybe…

  “I suppose I was always sorry for Ed,” Sherry was saying in my ear. “I’m sorry I can’t feel sorrier now. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that I think Ed didn’t care much, himself. Maybe he was even a little relieved that now he can stop trying.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said carefully.

  “No, I guess not. I—Nick, you aren’t mad, are you? About Ed?”

  “I’m very happy, naturally,” I said. “For God’s sake, Sherry. Why wouldn’t I be mad? Sure I’m mad. But—I know it’s your business now, not mine. See? I have changed.”

  “Have you?”

  “I suppose I’ll have to prove it, some way. I’ll find a way.” She was silent. I could tell by the sound of her breathing on the wire that she was about to break off and hang up. I don’t know how I knew it. I just did. I said the first thing that came into my head to stop her.

  “Who do you think killed Gavotte?” I asked. Then I stopped and held my own breath, scared and mad at myself. But it was a perfectly natural question, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t anybody have asked the same thing? I suppose they would, because Sherry’s voice only sounded tired when it came, not suspicious or afraid.

  “I don’t know, Nick. Nobody knows.”

  “Didn’t the police talk to you? Ask about enemies he might have had? Stuff like that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not? You weren’t in love with the guy, were you?”

  “Oh, stop it, Nick.”

  But I couldn’t stop.

  “Well, did he?” I said. “Have any enemies?”

  Sherry said tiredly, “Of course he did. You can’t run a bar and not have a few quarrels. Ed drank too much. You couldn’t tell what he’d do when he was drunk. He’d get ideas, you know, the way things look when you’re high enough. He’d do crazy things and wouldn’t remember them the next day.”

  “He did, eh? Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’d cry and carry on, about how he was as good as anybody else. You know what a crying drunk’s like. He wasn’t very responsible when he was tight. When I first knew him, I thought he took drugs. But it was just the way he was. Liquor set him off, that was all. He’d do crazy things.”

  “Like a marijuana jag, you mean?”

  “I guess so. He was a worrier.”

  “What did he have to worry about?”

  “He made up things,” Sherry said.

  “Like what?”

  “You.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said angrily, “Ed wasn’t a fool. Night before last—don’t you suppose he knew what happened? He was drunk when I came in, sitting at his desk going over a lot of bills with a bottle on the desk beside him. He knew what we’d been doing.”

  “That was too goddam bad,” I said. “Maybe I should have asked his permission.”

  She pretended not to hear me.

  “He had the closet locked. The one with my clothes in it. He said he knew what I was going to do, run away with you.”

  “He wasn’t such a fool, maybe.”

  “He was drunk,” Sherry said. “Once he thought I’d run away with McElroy. Then I got him calmed down about that. I told him he couldn’t stop me if I wanted to leave, but that I’d let him know, fair and square, any time it happened. It was that sort of an arrangement all along. That was how I wanted it. Ed kept trying to make it into something else. Once, when I was going out, he hid my purse—and I was only going to a show. But he could convince himself of anything. This time I suppose he did have something to worry about, though. He knew who you were.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Oh, he apologized, after a while. And went back to worrying over his bills and writing checks. And drinking.”

  “He must have been crazy,” I said. “A guy like that would make a lot of enemies. The wonder is he lived as long as he did.”

  “All right, now let’s stop talking about him,” Sherry said. “Aren’t you satisfied yet? I told you I didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve got my own plans, and that’s all I want to think about now. I’m going to do exactly what I want.”

  “I won’t try to stop you. You’re right, it’s none of my business. I’ve learned that much. I’ve got to…well, leave it at that. Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going to Ed’s funeral,” she said.

  “That won’t be tomorrow.”

  “The detective said it probably would be.”

  “But—I mean, when a man’s killed, they—”

  “He said they’d have the autopsy today. He thought it would be routine. I don’t know. They might…I don’t want to talk about it. If the funeral’s tomorrow, I’m going to be there. And I’m not going out with you afterward. That’s the least I can do for Ed.”

  “For my dough, you’ve done too much for him already.”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then what do we talk about? Why won’t you see me tomorrow?”

  “I told you, Nick. Besides, I’ve—well, I’ve got to see McElroy. I’m not sure just when, but—”

  “Maybe he’ll be at the funeral,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

  There was a little pause. When she spoke again, Sherry sounded a little sharp.

  “At least he happened to think I might be needing money. I got a check from him in the mail today, with a card that just said, ‘No strings.’ What do you think of that?”

  “I think he’s a smart bastard, as well as a rich one. Are you going to fall for it?”

  “I’m sorry I mentioned it,” she said. “Forget it. I don’t need McElroy’s money, Nick. I’m just going to see him to say thanks and give him his check back. It’s all right.” The sharpness had gone out of her voice, leaving it just tired.

  I said, “Well—if you can see him, you can see me, can’t you? Just for half an hour, anyhow. I’ll drive you to the funeral and—”

  “We said good-by Monday night. I meant it. I think it’s time to say it again.”

  “Sherry, I—”

  “You see why I wouldn’t let you into the apartment, Nick? This way I can be sure you’ll keep your promises.”

  “Sherry, that isn’t fair,” I said. “If things are wrong, why blame me? I do the best I can. I don’t do things out of—of meanness. You know that. Everybody makes mistakes, but nobody wants to. Nobody says, ‘Now I’m going to make a mistake,’ and then goes ahead and does it. I do the best I—”

  “I know, I know,” she said, and then:

  “Good-by, Nick.”

  I heard the telephone click, and the line went dead.

  I stood there for a few moments looking at the little round mouth of the thing on the wall facing me. I was mad, but not too mad. After a while I blew smoke into the black mouth where Sherry’s voice had been. I pushed open the door and walked out.

  Let it lay, I thought.

  She’d see me again when I was ready to make another try. I’d have to watch it, though. Because Sherry was perfectly capable, if pushed, of settling things by getting on a plane or train and leaving no forwarding address.

  Meantime, here I was, on a street corner in Phoenix, Arizona, and what next?

  What I’d done, I suppose, was commit that perfect crime you hear so much about. I’d done it in self-defense, without any intention or motive. But now—afterward—I had the motive. I’d just done it backwards was all. If it could happen all over again tonight, it would be more murder than killing. Except that I wouldn’t do it; I wasn’t really a murderer.

  That’s one of the words you read in newspapers and books. Not real. Not—you.

  Well, let it lay. Sherry hadn’t mentioned me to the cops, and I guessed she wasn’t going to, now. So I was in the clear. I’d still have to be careful with De Anza. There was
no telling what his screwball mind would work out if he found out Sherry was my ex-wife, Gavotte had been keeping her, and that Gavotte was dead. But that was simple. Why should De Anza find out? He probably never went more than a hundred yards away from the house. He had his jade and those other habits of his, whatever they were. They needn’t bother me, though. I didn’t have to smoke those hopped-up cigarettes of his or pet the king snake. Or anything else.

  Remembering Callahan, I began to wonder. He’d been smoking those cigarettes. And what else had he got into?

  So what? I’d been around enough to know some of the angles, the lengths a man can go to, to think he’s having fun. Women, too. De Anza might like circuses or getting beat up or just being a peeper or a dozen other tricks, but that was his business, and I knew enough to stay in the clear. There was one guy I met once, he liked to have a woman in a coffin, with her playing dead, and it gave him quite a bang. I couldn’t see it myself, figuring that there’s only one thing worth doing in a coffin, and it takes only one person to do that.

  A bus stopped, but I waved it on. I started to walk, humming “Minnie,” and after a while switched over to “Willie the Weeper.”

  She promised him a pretty Ford automobile

  With a diamond headlight and a silver steering wheel.

  The new shoes were still hurting, so I flagged a bus after all, and rode nearly to the hotel. Then, to kill time, I went in a drugstore, a big place, all bright lights and shiny glass and metal. It suited me; I didn’t much feel like hitting a gin-mill. I picked up a few things, toothbrush, tooth powder, a razor and some shaving cream, and had a Coke and sandwich at the fountain. In the mirror, I didn’t look half bad. The haircut had done it—that, and the new clothes. I looked as if I had some money in my pockets. Not a thousand bucks, but enough to call a taxi if I wanted one. All my muscles felt a little tired but good, the way they feel after you’ve taken a lot of exercise, and it’s a day or two later, when you’ve had a chance to relax.

  I liked the drugstore. Shiny and clean and new. Phoenix was new, too. New to me. In a funny way, it was like getting a fresh start, and still it was like going back to the time before my mother ran off, when I was a kid, and a drugstore meant sodas and Hershey bars. Usually when you go back to a place after a long time it’s got dirty in the meantime, but here it was clean and bright and—and new. Like a new Buick, the same car, the same one you used to drive, but without the mileage chalked up on the speedometer. Good rubber, fast pickup, a clean motor—that’s the way it was with me, somehow. I was glad I hadn’t pushed Sherry too hard. You don’t drive a new car seventy miles an hour right off. Break it in, break it in easy. Same with my job, I thought. You’ve got your chance, don’t burn out the engine. And change the oil, get a grease job, pretty often, at first.