by Robert Bloch
He stood there, turning white, then red. The oldest bartender said, “You all right, Mister? Want I should call copper on this guy?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m okay. Just tell him to pick up his toys and beat it.”
Calgary winced as he stooped over. He had the knife in his hand again, but the bartender was waiting with the sap. “You heard what he said,” the bartender told him. “Now beat it before somebody changes their mind.”
“Come on, Joe,” said the little redhead.
That did it. He couldn’t touch me or the bartender. But she was available, and he noticed her for the first time. “You lousy little tramp!” he muttered. “You hadda have a big night, huh? I’ll give you a big night, you dirty little two-bit—”
The sap whistled. “Out,” said the bartender. “On your way. Now!”
Joe Calgary backed away, twisting the knife in his big hand. “I’ll get you,” he said. “I’ll fix you good for this. You hear me? I’ll get you.”
He wasn’t talking to the bartender, or to me. He was talking to the redhead. That is, he thought he was. Actually he was talking to the whole world—to his fat old sloppy Ma and drunken Pa, and the dopey teacher and the crummy truant officer, and all the kids on the playground who were cleaner and smarter and nicer than he was.
But the redhead thought he meant her, too, and she shivered.
Even after Calgary trailed out, after the excited murmur of voices subsided and broke up into individual units of gabble, even after I’d sat down again, the little redhead still sat shivering.
“Thanks, Mister.” The oldest bartender leaned toward me. “I mean about taking him off me. And about not yelling copper. Gives the place a bad name, you know.”
“I know.”
“How about a drink, now? On the house?”
“Good idea.” I meant it, too. I was shivering, but inside. Not because of Calgary—because of the knife. It was very sharp, that knife. Sharp as a razor, sharp as a scissors.
I pushed away the thought, grabbed the one next to it and hung on: little shivering redhead.
“What about a drink for Trixie, here, too?” I asked. “No reason why she should be cheated out of her evening.”
“Sure, whatever you say. Overholt was yours? And Trixie—bourbon and white for a wash?”
Trixie nodded. Her trembling subsided measurably as she turned her head and smiled. “Much obliged,” she said. Then, “Hey, how’d you know my name?”
“Isn’t that what he called you?”
“Sure. You were listening.”
“If I hadn’t listened, I couldn’t have done anything.”
“That’s right. I mean, thanks. Say, you weren’t afraid of that big slob at all, not even when he pulled a shiv on you.”
“Not much.” Not much was right. I’d almost passed out, but then she didn’t have to know all my secrets. Or did she?
“You all alone?”
“Up until now.”
This made her give out with a real smile. The drinks came, and she raised her glass in fingers that shook only slightly.
“Here’s to you, Mister.”
“Tom Kendall’s the name. And here’s to you, Trixie.” We drank. And the bartender popped up like a slightly decrepit, benevolent Jack-in-the-box.
“You folks ready for another? It’s all on the house tonight.”
I looked at Trixie. She looked at me. Then she made the one feminine gesture I’ve learned to recognize—the gesture that means you’re in like Flynn. She put her right hand up to her neck and smoothed her hair. And this time her hand didn’t shake at all.
“There’s a booth vacant over there in the back,” she said.
I nodded. The nod took in the booth, the suggestion, and Trixie herself. Although, upon close inspection, Trixie deserved considerably more than a mere nod.
Oh, she wore one of those green dresses that her type of redhead inevitably wears; her shoes were a clashing crimson, and her bag was much too large and pseudo-alligatorish.
But there was nothing pseudo about her red hair, or her pale, unfreckled face, or her smoke-gray eyes with the little green lights around the pupils. Her mouth was full and generous beneath the lipstick, and she walked with a complete awareness of what she so demurely displayed. She was much too good for a Joe Calgary. For that matter, she was probably much too good for me. I’m not talking about taste in clothes, or formal education, or even current moral standards. I’m talking about the woman.
And in the booth it was the woman I responded to. The woman, and the drinks on the house, and the mood of the moment which—surprisingly enough—wasn’t despair any more. Sure, I’d lost a lot today. A thousand bucks’ profit, a girl, a friend. I’d even lost my memory a while back. But old W. C. Handy had it right when he wrote those lines about a red-headed woman . . .
We talked a bit. Turned out she was a part-time model at a downtown style shop. Turned out I was a stamp and book dealer. Turned out I mustn’t judge her by that Joe Calgary, why she scarcely knew him, and why she ever said she’d go out with him in the first place she didn’t know. Turned out I was explaining why guys like Calgary liked to carry knives.
That must have come several drinks later, because I was using words like “psychology.”
“Got to understand his psychology,” I told her. “He’s the bluffer type. Always making a threat or a fist and hoping that’s enough—hoping the other guy will back down on account of his size.”
“But he threatened me, you heard him.” She was really frightened, and no mistake. So I went on, improvising my reassurance.
“Take my word for it. I’ve read up a little bit about the psychopathic killer, and I’d swear he’s not the type at all. Your real knife artist, your actual murderer, would never display his weapon. And he’d never threaten anyone openly. He’s just smile, and go away, and lurk somewhere waiting in the dark. Waiting in the dark, in the fog, in the night. Waiting silently and then striking silently. Like Jack the Ripper.”
“I know about him,” Trixie said, pathetically proud because she’d recognized a phrase, a name she could understand. “I saw this movie once; it was all about him and how he used to cut up these women. I was so scared I almost didn’t stay to see the end.”
“But it was only a movie, Trixie.”
“I know. Wasn’t there a real Jack the Ripper, though?”
“Yes. There was. But that was in London, almost seventy years ago. In 1888, to be exact.”
“Gosh, you know all about those things, don’t you?”
“Not much, really. But as I say, I’ve read a bit. About the Ripper and Haarman, and the other butchers.”
“Were there a lot of them? I mean, are there still people like that running around loose?”
“Once in a great while. You don’t hear too much about them, and as I say, they’re usually very cautious and secretive. That’s why they carry knives, I suppose—because a knife is silent.”
All at once I didn’t want to talk about the Ripper any more, or knives, or silence. I didn’t want silence. I wanted voices not sharp but soft, and the slow, growing intimate warmth of possession.
What did Trixie want? I don’t know. Perhaps she wanted to show her gratitude. Maybe she wanted someone to hold her and make her forget about the threats. It might be that she wanted the warmth of possession herself, or even that she wanted me.
I don’t know. But I do know that she smiled, and made that gesture of hand to hair, and then she said, “Look, honey, it’s awful noisy in here, don’t you think? I mean, my place is only about four blocks away, and if you don’t mind drinking bourbon instead of that rye—”
Well, I didn’t mind in the least. I followed her out of the booth. After I said goodnight to the oldest bartender, I took her arm and we walked to the door together. Her arm was soft and yielding beneath my fingers. Her hip brushed mine, and it felt soft and yielding, too. Softness always yields in the end.
Going down the street her high heels
clattered in counterpoint to the clatter of my cleats. It was almost eleven, but Blind Bill still stood on the corner. Still stood, stood still, Blind Bill . . . I was getting tight.
Tight as a tick, and tick-tick went my watch as I held it up to my ear. Then I wound it, to make sure it was tight too. Both of us tight together. Me and my watch. Me and Trixie, tight together. That’s the way it should be, that’s the way it would be.
I felt sorry as we passed Blind Bill on that corner. I was going to call out to him, but Trixie tugged at my arm and whispered, “Come on, let’s go. He gives me the creeps just to look at him,” So I went on. What could I say, anyway? What can you say to a poor blind moocher late at night as you pass him with a pretty redhead?
There were no pretty little redheads with apartments for Blind Bill. And I couldn’t help it or do anything about it. So we walked along, in rhythm with her feet and heart and pulse-beat, and my hand squeezed her arm. After a moment her arm went around me because we were coming to a dark place. Or because she liked having her arm around me. Or both.
Then we got to her place. It was on the street floor, front, in one of those little six-family units over behind the park.
Inside she turned on the light, humming a little, because she was glad to be home. She pulled down the shades, still humming, because after all a girl’s got her reputation to think of. She went out to the kitchen and I could hear her hum for a moment more. Then silence. No sounds of bottle or glasses, either.
I got up from the sofa and walked out there, down the hall. To get to the kitchen I had to pass the entrance to her bedroom. And—surprise—she wasn’t in the kitchen, hadn’t gone there at all! She was just standing in the doorway to the bedroom, and I guess she’d stopped humming because she never hummed while she took off her clothes.
She smiled at me in the semi-darkness.
“You still want that drink?” she asked . . .
We had the drink, later. Much later, we had another. Perhaps even another, but everything was so confused. The light was on, the light was off, she was laughing, she was crying, I was laughing, I was crying. Why was I crying? Because I couldn’t remember, and it was hard to remember now if her hair was black like Marie’s, or blonde like Kit’s, or red like Trixie’s. That was her name, Trixie, and she was afraid. Afraid of whom—me? She didn’t have to be afraid of me. She had to be afraid of Joe Calgary and somebody named Jack. Jack the Ripper, who knew a lot of girls like Trixie; Jack the Ripper, who never got caught.
I must have told her about Jack again, or maybe I just thought I did and I was really telling it to myself, inside my head. It was dark inside my head now, and dark outside. Better to stay inside, to sleep there and hide there and lurk there in the night and the fog where all is silent including the knife. If I really went inside, really went to sleep, I’d forget about the knife. Trixie was warm, and the knife was cold. Take her warmth, cut out the cold. Cut it out. Cut—it—out!
Then I was screaming “Cut it out!” over and over again, and I was wide awake this time, wide awake at last and able to see in the early morning light.
I was able to sit up in bed and see Trixie lying there on the floor, red hair haloing her head and red blood for a necklace about her throat . . .
FIVE
The first thing I wanted to do was run. Yesterday had started that way for me—running. Then I shook my head, because there was nowhere to run to. Nowhere in the world.
Marie gone, Kit gone, Art gone, and now Trixie was gone, too. I’d be going next myself, and I needn’t bother to run.
I sat up and put my feet down on the other side of the bed. For a long moment I poised there, halfway to getting up, blinking and shaking my head, trying to clear it, trying to think, to remember.
We’d had a lot to drink. And then I passed out, or thought I passed out, and I had these nightmares. They were bad, but they were nothing compared to the one I had now. And this one was real.
Once again I forced myself to look. The nightmare lay sprawled, almost spread-eagled, on the floor. The hair was red, but more of an orange now that there was something with which to compare it.
And there was something for comparison, plenty for that and to spare.
I don’t like to think about it, much less describe it, even now. But I saw. Saw that it wasn’t only her throat. It was her shoulders, and her chest, and her stomach—and whoever had done it hadn’t just meant to kill her.
Whoever had done it—
I got up and almost bumped into the mirror. I almost bumped into the sight of my own face, staring there.
“You,” I whispered. “You, Tom Kendall. You know who you are this morning. And you know, today, that you didn’t do it. Not this. Not to her.”
As soon as I said it, I felt that it was true. Sure, I’d spent the night here and I was drunk. I’d passed out and I had fantasies.
But I remember everything—everything except for the time when I slept. The time when I slept and she died. Could it be that I did it in my sleep?
“No,” I told myself. “No, you didn’t.”
And I believed it. Yes, I believed it. But would anyone else?
I forced myself to walk around the bed, kneel beside her. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t want to touch her. But I had to look for something. I had to look for the knife: the knife, the razor, the weapon—the silent weapon—the weapon that came in the night, came through the door or the window.
There was no knife on the floor. There was no knife in the hall, or the front room. There was no knife in the bathroom, and when I opened the kitchen drawer I found only a ten-cent paring knife with a small blade.
I went back to the front room. The door was locked—and from the inside. I went over to the window. The shade flapped. I pulled it up, and there was the opening—halfway to the top!
I tried to remember now; had she opened that window? Or closed it? Or merely pulled down the blinds?
No answer. I couldn’t find an answer.
I went back into the bedroom, and the old running urge came up again, strong. I looked at my watch. Six-thirty. It was still early. The front hall and the streets would still be deserted.
Now was my chance. Now was my chance to dress and get out of here, fast. That was my only chance.
I put on my clothes. The urge was getting stronger and stronger. I could hardly wait to lace up my shoes, hardly manage to tie the bows. Then I was on my feet and once again I nearly bumped into the mirror. I looked at myself and I shook my head.
I walked down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the cold-water faucet in the bowl. I let it run for a moment and then I stuck my right wrist under it. I took away my right hand and stuck my left wrist under it. Then I stooped and ducked my head, until the water was icing along the back of my neck.
I found a towel, dried off. Then I turned and walked back down the hall. It took me a thousand years, but I made it. I sat there staring for another century or so, and at last I picked up the phone.
“Hello,” I said, and it took a year for every word to form. “Hello, get me the police. Yeah, that’s right, the police. I want to report a murder.”
Modern science is wonderful. The phone got me the police, all right; it got me the police in about two minutes flat. More police than I could handle.
But I wasn’t handling the police. They were handling me. The four men from the squad car just hung around downstairs, trying to keep off the crowd which their presence attracted. The man from the coroner’s office and the photographer came later, and they checked and measured and dusted and tested and shot off flash-bulbs. Two detectives cased the place thoroughly. And I sat in the kitchen with Lieutenant Cohen.
Yes, Cohen—not Murphy or Reilly or Kelly or O’Brien. And he didn’t keep his hat on in the house. He didn’t even wear a gray suit; it was blue, and not blue serge but brighter. He was short and stocky, and red-headed—dark red, not bright like Trixie’s hair. He wore a small mustache and he wasn’t much older than I was. He might have
been a very good Homicide man, but he’d never get a job on a TV crime show.
He sat me down at the table and flipped open a notebook. His fountain pen leaked a little, and he shook it carefully onto the first page, then tore the page out.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked. “Or would you rather wait for a formal statement? You know, of course—”
“—that anything you say maybe held against you.” I nodded. “All right, I’ll tell you what happened.”
So I gave him my name and age and address and then I told him. He sat there writing notes, telegram-fashion, but he didn’t interrupt or say anything. Once in a while he chewed at his mustache to see whether it would come off. It didn’t.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but it was something different. I thought he’d break in, ask for details, follow up points in my story and try to break them down. I thought he’d nod, or chain smoke, or stare at me.
But he just wrote everything down: starting with me going into Swanee’s and ending with the time I got dressed and then changed my mind and called the police.
When I finished he sat back, shook his head, and chewed at his mustache once more. Then, “Henley!” he called. “Come in here for a minute.”
Henley was another one of the Homicide men. He came in from the bedroom.
“What’s the story?” asked Lieutenant Cohen.
Henley looked at me, shrugged, looked away. “Nothing definite yet. She’s mugged and we got prints. Lots of prints. Corr is on his way back to the lab. We should get the dope tonight sometime.”
Cohen nodded. “All right. Make sure you got prints from the front room window—the open one, on the right.”
“Already dusted.”
“Tell Flint to take this name and address and check on it.” He gave Henley my name and address.
“Got it.”
“And one more thing.” Cohen turned to me. “Mr. Kendall, will you please give this man a description of Joe Calgary? The more complete the better, of course. And see if you can describe his knife.”