Sliver

by Ira Levin

  “Yes, you can get coffee. Don’t hang up, leave the phone on the bed. I won’t be able to see you in there but I’ve got an eye on the lobby. If you pick up the house phone, I’ll see Terry go over and answer it; the instant he says ‘Yes, Miss Norris,’ Felice gets a cut, and if he—” “Forget it,” she said, “I’ll get water from the bathroom. I assume that’s permitted.”

  “If you want coffee, you can have coffee, just don’t touch the house phone, that’s all.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  She put the phone down, got up from the bed.

  Went to the kitchen, switched the light on. Looked, as the fluorescents pinged to brightness, at the food and water bowls on the floor in the corner, the scratching post on the wall.

  The wall phone, the house phone . . .

  She ran water into the teakettle, set it on a burner, turned the flame wide beneath it. Spooned instant coffee into the mug with the big brown K on it.

  Stood watching the humming kettle. Glanced at the knife rack.

  She brought the mug into the bedroom. Picked the phone up, sat on the side of the bed, put the phone to her ear.

  “I made some too.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” she said. “We’ll have a kaffeeklatsch.” She sipped.

  “Honey, I’m sorry, I need some time. I don’t know what the hell to do. . . .”

  She shifted around, putting a folded leg onto the bed; looked up at the light. Shook her head. Sighed. “Oh God, Pete . . .” she said. “Was it because you were afraid he was going to find out about the cameras? Sheer?”

  She sat looking at the light. “Was that why, Petey?” she asked.

  A sigh. “Yes . . . He was going to go to the Takai showroom. He’d have seen one of the lights there, or a picture, blown the whistle. . . .”

  She said, “And then the other deaths would have been reexamined. . . .”

  She sat looking at the light, holding the mug, the phone.

  “I don’t think I should be talking any more about this. You’re liable to wind up repeating it in court.”

  She drank. Looked at the light. “Petey,” she said, “you know you can’t go on—doing what you’ve done. You’ll get caught sooner or later, and the later it is, the worse it’s going to be.”

  “You want me to turn myself in. . . .”

  “Yes, I think it would make sense,” she said. “It would count in your favor—strongly, I’m sure—and you can afford to get one of the top trial lawyers. They’ll be fighting to represent you, they’re all such publicity hounds.”

  “Oh yeah, there would be publicity, all right. Can you imagine how it would be?”

  She sighed, shrugged a shoulder. “I still think it’s the best thing for you to do,” she said. “The only thing.” She sipped, looking at the light.

  “I could jump.”

  “Oh don’t say that, baby, no,” she said, leaning forward, shaking her head. “If everything you did was done because of the cameras—and it was, ultimately, wasn’t it?” She looked at the light. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes . . .”

  She said, “Baby, I’m sure, in light of who your mother was and all, a good lawyer could . . . make a convincing case for . . . a plea of insanity. . . .”

  “You mean I could get to spend my life in a hospital? Be Hinckley’s roommate?”

  “Not your life,” she said. “Maybe just a few years if you turn yourself in. You’re young, you’ll still have a future. And you’ll be alive. Don’t talk about jumping, that would be really stupid.”

  “Oh . . . shit. I’ve got to think. It’s a tough decision. . . .”

  “Of course it is,” she said. “Take your time. I wasn’t planning on going out tonight.” She smiled. “Why don’t you bring Felice back up now? She’s probably getting hungry.” She sat smiling at the light.

  “No. I’m keeping her here. So you don’t make the decision for me. I want to make my own decisions.”

  “All right,” she said. “I can understand that.”

  “There’s stuff here she can eat. She’s having a ball, sniffing all over the place. I put some paper in the shower for her.”

  “She could get in trouble in the back room.”

  “I closed the door. She’s fine—as long as you don’t push me, Kay. I mean it.”

  “Okay,” she said to the light. Nodded.

  “You don’t have to stay on the bed. Just keep away from the phones and the windows and the door. I’ll call later. Wait till you know it’s me.” A click. The dial tone.

  She turned, hung up.

  Sat looking at the mug.

  The snow had started. People were coming into the lobby brushing it from their shoulders.

  He watched Sam getting into his duffel coat. Kay, sitting against the right end of the sofa, hugging her jeaned knees, bare feet up on the cushion. She nibbled at a sidepiece of her glasses, the manuscript she’d been reading tucked down at her side.

  He broke a fortune cookie open, pulled out the paper strip, held it toward the blue-white light. The greater part of inspiration is perspiration.

  Right again, Jolly Chan. He crushed it, tossed it on the plate.

  Ate a piece of the cookie, watching Sam come out of the stairway door and walk the path of dark floor mat across the lobby, saying something to Walt by the front door.

  Kay reached, put the glasses on the coffee table. Looked up at him, hugging her knees. Breathed a sigh. “Call me, will you?” she said. “I think you know the number.”

  He watched her looking at him. Picked the phone up, touched the auto-dial button and 1.

  Heard the beeps, got a busy signal. Her phone rang. She reached, stayed her hand, looking at him.

  He drew a breath. Hung up, switched her phone link on.

  She sat back as the phone rang. Played with a shirt button. Good angle for the cleavage . . . “Hello. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your message . . .” Good light too.

  Beep.

  “Hi, it’s Roxie. You there?”

  She sat up, holding the sofa’s back, leaning her head toward the foyer.

  “The skating is off, Fletcher has to go to Atlanta. Unless you guys want to anyway. If you wanted to originally. Let me know. ’Bye.” A kiss. The machine’s click.

  She looked up at him. “Pete?” she said.

  He picked up the phone, touched the redial button.

  She lowered her head, sat still.

  The phone rang.

  She sat back against the sofa arm. Stretched her legs out, crossed them at the ankles. Played with the shirt button while the phone rang, the message played. The jeans molded her hips and thighs, the V between . . .

  Beep.

  “It’s me,” he called.

  She reached, picked up the phone, leaned back.

  They waited. She played with the shirt button, lying there on the Cupid’s-bow sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles, holding the phone. . . .

  Beep.

  “Hi,” she said, looking at him.

  “Hi,” he said, watching her.

  She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about what it’s going to be like,” she said. “The publicity. The piranhas. For months, through a long trial, and after . . . The smirks I’ll be getting behind my back from everyone in the office, everyone I know. The years out of your life, more than likely . . .” She sighed. “The more I think about it, the worse it all seems.” She looked at him.

  He watched her.

  “Baby,” she said, “I have an idea that may be a much happier way out of this.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Brace yourself,” she said. “It’s going to surprise you, but I think we ought to give it some serious thought.”

  “I’m braced,” he said.

  “What if we got married?” she said.

  He looked at her looking at him. “You’re right,” he said, “it’s a surprise.”

&n
bsp; “What it would do for me,” she said, “among other things, is relieve me of the feeling that I have to tell. As long as spouses don’t have to testify against each other, then they shouldn’t be expected to blow the whistle on each other either, should they? It’s not as if you’re some crazy serial killer who did it for kicks or because of a compulsion, and might do it again. You were threatened, you were defending yourself, you had rational motives. At least that’s what I’m assuming was—always the case. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Watching her, he said, “Go on . . .”

  “Naturally,” she said, “there would have to be some very definite preconditions, number one being an absolute shutting down of the system, at once, with no waffling about it—on my part either. We’ve got to recognize that someone will always be finding out or becoming a threat in one way or another.”

  He watched her. “Number two?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought it all out yet. But Jesus, Pete, is either one of us ever likely to find anyone else so right? The fun we have together, the fantastic sex . . . You’re still you, regardless; I can’t switch off my feelings just like that. And I’ve been doing some soul-searching. Don’t think I’m totally blind to the money, because I’m not, believe me. Condition Two will probably be that we get a big apartment on Park and a staff of three.” She smiled. “What do you think?”

  He said, “It sounds great. . . . But how do I know you mean it? You could be conning me. Maybe the minute we step outside you’ll start screaming for the police.”

  She sighed, playing with the shirt button. “I suppose you’ve got to consider the possibility,” she said. “Frankly my first reaction was to—try to think of a ploy of some kind. But Pete, the more I think about the media, and the trial—my God, it would be the biggest in years—and the piece out of your life . . . What for? What’s done is done, it’s not going to be undone. If I didn’t feel obliged to tell . . .” She sighed, shook her head. “No, I’m not conning you, baby,” she said. “All women aren’t actresses. Will you please give it some serious thought? On the down side it means you’d probably have to settle for cats instead of children. . . .”

  “That’s a plus,” he said.

  She uncrossed her ankles, lifted a knee, looked at him, the phone to her cheek. “What were you going to get?” she asked. “A sketch?”

  “A painting,” he said, watching her. “They have two for me to look at.”

  She sighed, shook her head. “I was going to get you a painting,” she said, playing with the shirt button. “Or some super photograph . . .”

  He watched her. “Do you have enough to eat?” he asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. “I’m dieting.”

  “Felice had shrimp with lobster sauce.”

  “Great, you’re going to spoil her. . . .”

  “She’s sleeping under the console,” he said. “With the pig.”

  She smiled. Rubbed at the side of her neck. Winced. “Ooch . . .” she said. “All this has got me so goddamn tight. . . .”

  He said, “Why don’t you take a bath?”

  She looked at him, smiled. “Good idea,” she said.

  “We’ll talk afterwards,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He watched her looking at him.

  They hung up.

  He got ready while she did.

  Reread the note, changed lover to stud, folded it. Stood, tucking it into his right hip pocket. She was running the water, squeezing in the bubble bath.

  He opened the bottom drawer on the left, found the box of plastic gloves; tore two from the roll, put them into his left side pocket. Checked his keys, the change in his right side pocket.

  She put a cassette in the bedroom player. Segovia’s guitar struck a chord.

  He watched her undress.

  Not looking at him. Not a glance.

  As if nobody could possibly be watching her, there in her cozy bedroom.

  Like in the old days. Only now she knew. . . .

  A definite turn-on . . .

  For her too?

  Was she maybe, just maybe, not trying to con him, she with those beautiful tits?

  The media really would be rough on her because of the age difference. . . . And who wouldn’t rather be rich than not?

  Come on, dummy.

  He peeled the plastic from a cassette, put it in, started taping—as she came to the doorway of the bathroom, holding closed her short satin robe. She stood looking at him, a hand at the switch. The light faded low.

  And came back up a little as she stood looking at him. Smiling? She went to the foam-filled tub; turned the water off. Moved to the sink, began pinning up her back hair, the robe opening to the mirror.

  He checked the 3B monitors, and 3A. Crazy Susan was in the living room, eating from a lap tray, watching the tube.

  He scanned the blue-white rows. Nothing major.

  Watched her drop the robe at her back, raise a leg, put a foot into the foam.

  He watched. . . .

  Checked his watch and the clock—7:50. Turned, went to the foyer. Peeped, opened the door, went out; drew the door closed.

  He opened the stairway door, went onto the landing with its black 13 and white fluorescence.

  Stood with a hand on the rail, looking up through the cleft between the undersides of stairs.

  She was trying to con him. No question about it.

  He hurried down the zigzagging half-flights, down the gray concrete well.

  He opened all three pairs of accordion doors; went to the other side of the room and stood surveying the sparsely hung closets—shoes and suitcases on the floor, top shelves lined with boxes and bags, stacks of paperbacks.

  “I’ve got one in the closet myself,” Sam had said, dealing cards around the table a few weeks after he moved in. “A jealous husband put out a contract on me once. Really, no shit. A jealous widower; she was dead. An actress I’d been boffing for ages. But I’m still in favor of banning them.”

  He remembered it somehow.

  He found it on the second try, in a zippered overnight bag, wrapped in a white motel towel smelling of oil—a blue-steel automatic, Beretta U.S.A. on the side, the milled grip empty. Two clips of bullets in the bag, one full, one with two spaces at the bottom.

  He hefted the gun in his plastic-gloved hand. Another bequest from the old man, in a way. He tucked it into the waist of his jeans, pulled the sweater down over it, patted it. Put the full clip of bullets in his left side pocket.

  He zipped the bag closed with the towel and the other clip in it, put it back on the closet shelf; he would unzip it when he came down afterward to put the note by the typewriter.

  He closed the accordion doors, leaving the one nearest the foyer partly open as he had found it.

  Sitting at the table in the living room, he checked his watch—7:57—and studied Sam’s typing, the last pages of it in the thick folder. The typing, not the words. Thea lay among the words. Afterward he would take those pages with him; no one would miss them.

  Some of the letters were darker than the others, hit harder—B’s, N’s, and H’s mostly. A few had been X’ed over.

  He got out the draft of the note. Rolled a sheet of Sam’s typing paper into the old Remington.

  Jabbed Sam-style with plastic-gloved fingers at the round black keys.

  The fourth try looked good:

  He brought it to the bookshelves, crouched, drew out one of the large books stacked flat on the bottom shelf—Classics of the Silent Screen; he put the sheet of paper inside it, on a picture of Pauline or whoever tied to the railroad tracks; put the book in its place in the stack.

  He brushed his hands, checked the watch—8:06. Sixteen minutes since he’d left. No sweat. She’d be half an hour at least—Segovia, the bubbles . . .

  He folded the draft of the note and the first three tries, put them in his pocket. Swung the hinged cover down over the typewriter, put the dictionary on the fol
der, the lamp and the chair the way they had been, switched the lamp off.

  He stood in the foyer doorway with a hand on the switch and a hand on the sweater-covered gun at his waist, taking a last look at the room—its thrift-shop furnishings no better-looking live than on the tube.

  He switched the light off, moved to the door, peeped out.

  Waited while a man waited outside the door of 3A.

  Waited while the door opened and Susan counted out bills, said something, closed the door.

  Waited while the man waited for the elevator.

  Hurried down the stairs taking the gloves off—8:11.

  He pressed the elevator button in the basement and went into the laundry room. Denise and Allan turned from one of the washers. He nodded to them, went to the machines.

  Denise and Allan? God, he was out of touch. They moved apart as he fed coins into slots. He bought potato chips and catnip; hurried out to the opening number-two elevator.

  Rode to thirteen.

  Unlocked the door.

  She was in the tub under islands of foam, her head on the rim by the wall, her eyes closed.

  He lowered himself into the chair, watching. Took out the gun, put it on the console.

  Sat watching.

  Felice jumped up on the console. She sniffed the gun. Stepped over it, sniffed the X-acto knife. Pawed it; it rolled away. He picked it up. “Thanks,” he said.

  He put the bag of chips down and cut open the catnip’s plastic shell; took out the thumb-size sack, held it toward Felice. She leaned, sniffed it. He tossed it away over his shoulder, she leaped from the console.

  He turned the brightness up a little.

  Watched, putting the knife in a drawer.

  Sat back, watching; fished with a foot under the console, hooked out the pig.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  She picked up the phone and tucked it against her shoulder, sitting cross-legged on the bed in pale pajamas. She scooped inside the container, brought out a spoonful of dark ice cream. Held it toward him, smiling.

  Beep.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ve got a vodka and tonic.” He shook the glass so the ice tinkled; sipped from it.

  She ate the spoonful of ice cream, looking at him. Asked, “Are we celebrating?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, watching her. “I need more time to think. I’ll tell you in the morning.”