Enough! (A Travesty and Ordo) (14 page)

Okay, kid, I know all about that line.
“Right,” I said, and rolled her off onto the floor.

*

“I love your pubic hair,” I said.

She gazed down at herself. “It is nice,
isn’t it? All furry and soft. But boy, in the
summertime I just have to shave and shave and shave. Because
of the bathing suits.”

“You must look fantastic in a
bikini.”

She smiled at me. I was learning that she
loved compliments above all other things. “You’ll have to see me
sometime.”

“I intend to.”

We were in the bedroom now. The first reel of
Gaslight
had been running itself out as we’d finished our first encounter, so
I’d quickly shut down the projector and hustled this incredible woman in here
onto the bed, where we could vary our approaches without danger of skinning our
elbows or knees.

It was the first time I’d ever made love to a
woman in a bedroom with a murder victim hanging in the closet, particularly a
victim of my own, and I must say it made absolutely no difference at all. I was
neither turned off nor were my responses heightened. Possibly I’m abnormal.

My reaction, however, was completely normal
when Patricia got off the bed and crossed the room to open the closet door.
“Ummm,” I said. “Ummm, unnn, ungg.”

“Do you have a robe? Oh, here it is.
Terrycloth, I love terrycloth, it feels so nice against my skin.”

Beyond her the pole sagged from the weight of
the Valpack. She closed the door, slipped into my robe, gave me a smile and a bye-bye finger waggle, and went off to the bathroom.

Christ. Since the Valium supply was
temporarily cut off, I padded barefoot out to the living room, switched on the
smallest dimmest light, found my glass, and made myself a
fresh bourbon on the rocks. When I carried it back to the bedroom
Patricia was there, getting dressed. “It’s terribly late,” she told
me.

“Don’t worry about it. Want a
drink?”

“No, I’d better go on home. Fred
worries.”

Fred was entitled, though I didn’t say so.
“Listen,” I said. “You just saw
Gaslight
, remember?”

“Of course,” she said, and gave me a
surprisingly lewd smile.

“I mean you have to be able to talk about
the movie,” I pointed out, and while she dressed and did her face and
fussed with her hair and generally cared for herself like a conscientious
gardener I gave her the plot and principal incidents of
Gaslight
. By then she
was ready to leave, so still naked I walked her to the door. “Now,
remember,” I said, helping her to bundle into her coats and hats and gloves
and scarves, “Charles Boyer was doing it, and the jewels were the
decoration in the dress.”

She nodded. “The jewels were in the
dress.”

“See you soon,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said, sparkly-eyed,
and kissed my nose, and left. I watched her down the first flight of stairs,
then shut the door, turned, and stepped smack on a thumbtack.

“Ow!” I said, naturally, and hopped
around on one foot till I got the thumbtack out. Then I limped around on one
and a half feet, cursing, until it occurred to me to wonder where that damn
thumbtack had come from.

Surely not from my desk, way
over at the other end of the room.

I turned on more lights, bewildered, and at
first I found nothing at all. Then, also on the floor, I came across a smallish
rubber band. Where had these things come from?

Edgarson. The chainlock.

Yes. When I closely studied the chainlock,
there was a tiny puncture in the wood of the door just past the metal plate
with the slot. Now I saw what Edgarson had done. He had looped the rubber band
around the chain, then with the thumbtack had fastened
both ends of the rubber band to the door. With the door open, the rubber band
was stretched out across the metal plate with the slot in it. When Edgarson
closed the door, the rubber band naturally contracted, pulling the chain with
it sliding the ball through the slot to the wide opening. When he thumped the
door, the ball fell out.

Another illusion shattered.

SEVEN

The Riddle of the Other Woman

The phone had rung
three times while Patricia was here, so I listened to my messages while going
through the drawerful of Edgarson’s possessions, the things formerly in his
pockets.

Only two messages;
one caller had hung up without saying anything. The first of the verbal callers
was Jack Freelander, umming and stuttering his way through another request to pick my brains for his damn porno article that Esquire would never
publish anyway, and the other was Kit: “Hi, baby. I’m feeling a lot better
all at once. I was mean yesterday, wasn’t I? Drove you out into
the storm. Come on back, and I’ll make it up to you?”

Any other time, honey, but just at the moment
I am (a) rather drained of my vital fluids, and (b) occupied with an unexpected
guest who just keeps hanging around.

Edgarson’s effects: One wallet, containing
thirty-seven dollars, four credit cards, a Tobin-Global laminated ID card with
his photograph on it, a New York driver’s license, about twenty assorted business cards, a few crumpled
old newspaper clippings that made no sense to me, and several pieces of paper
scribbled over with notes to himself; phone numbers
and the like. Three key rings, loaded with keys. A claim
check for a parking garage over on First Avenue. A Boy Scout knife, with
enough doohickeys and thingamabobs to dismantle a tank. A plastic pouch with a little pocket screwdriver set. A circuit tester. Various envelopes
containing official-looking documents concerning bail-bond jumpers and
repossessable automobiles. A small address book—I wasn’t in it. A half-used checkbook, with all the stubs blank. A little metal box containing thumbtacks, paper clips, rubber
bands, washers and so on. A small roll of black
electric tape. A tattered paperback copy of
One Of
Our Agents Is Missing
, by E. Howard Hunt. A dollar and
thirty-seven cents in change.

I pocketed the wallet and claim check and change, stuffed the key rings and knife and screwdriver set and
circuit tester and little metal box and roll of electric tape back into
the drawer, and shredded the envelopes, checkbook and address book into the
wastebasket, on top of the paperback. Then I bundled into my overcoat and left
the apartment.

It was now shortly after eight in the evening,
and the neighborhood was full of cars from Queens, which is the normal weekend cross we have
to bear in this part of the city. The air was very cold, the sky was still
leaden and low, and while the main avenues had been cleared of snow the side
streets were still rather clogged.

I found the parking garage on First Avenue, and Edgarson’s claim check got me the same
dirty blue Plymouth Fury he’d been following me around in. I paid the tab out
of Edgarson’s wallet, tipped the boy an Edgarson quarter, and drove on back to
my place, where I parked next to Staples’ favorite fire hydrant.

Lugging that Valpack down the stairs was the
hardest and least appetizing part of the whole job. Thump, thump, thump all the
way down. I couldn’t lift the thing, so I also had to drag it through the snow
on the sidewalk and then heave and push and cram it up over the rear bumper and
into the trunk. Finally it arranged itself in there, and I slammed the lid and
drove out to Kennedy
Airport, where a TWA skycap said, “You can’t
park here, sir.

“I just want to leave my luggage. It’s
too heavy for me to carry.”

He gave me a superior smile, but when I opened
the trunk and he tried to lift the Valpack by the handle his expression
suggested he’d just found a hernia. “My my,” he said. “That is
heavy.”

Should I do a joke about there being a body in
it? No, I should not.

The skycap struggled
the Valpack onto his cart and said, “Do you have your ticket, sir?”

“Not yet.”

“And where will you be going?”

Feeling a cool climate was best under the
circumstances, I said, “Seattle.”

“Fine, sir.
You’ll find your bag at the ticket counter.”

I thanked him, gave him one of Edgarsons
dollars, and he wheeled Edgarson away.

Driving out to the long-term parking lot, I
considered leaving it at that, but time and confusion were my allies here, so I
took the inter-airport bus back to TWA, and used one of Edgarsons credit cards
to buy him a nonstop round trip ticket to Seattle, first class. My Valpack was tagged, two
clerks wrestled it onto the conveyer belt, and Edgarson rolled away on the
start of his journey westward. My clerk compared the quickly-scrawled signature
I’d just perpetrated with Edgarson’s quickly-scrawled signature on the credit
card, was satisfied, gave me the card and the ticket, and wished me a pleasant
journey. “Thank you very much,” I said. “I love Seattle this time of year.”

For only fifteen more of Edgarsons dollars, a
taxi took me to my general neighborhood in Manhattan. I had emptied his wallet en route, keeping
the money and stuffing the cards and papers into my overcoat pockets, and in
the course of a six-block stroll I distributed the wallet and its former
contents into twenty-five or thirty trash receptacles. Then I returned home, to
find that more people had been in conversation with my answering machine.

Two of them; the Staples
family. Patricia’s message was first, and was both brief and evocative.
What an astonishing way for that woman to talk. When Fred’s voice came on
immediately after I felt a certain brief discomfort, which was not at all eased
by what he had to say:

“More developments in the Laura Penney
case, Carey. I think maybe you could be a big help after all. Call me at the
office.” And he gave his number.

I phoned Patricia first, and we said warm
things back and forth, about how much we hud enjoyed and how much we would
enjoy and so on, and then she said she’d be in Manhattan tomorrow afternoon and
would I be home between two and three? Oddly enough, I would.

Next, I said, “Sweetheart, I hate to
mention this, but Fred does come here sometimes. I’d hate to
have him accidentally recognize any voices on my answering machine, if you
follow me.”

“You mean you don’t want me to tell you
those things any more?”

“Don’t talk to some cold machine,” I
explained. “Talk to my warm ear.”

So she did, at some length and in some detail
concerning the morrow, and when at last I managed to end the conversation I was
feeling a bit humid. I went and washed my face in cold water before phoning her
husband.

The guttural New York voice that answered told me Staples wasn’t
there, but when I identified myself he gave me a number where Fred could be
reached. I jotted it down, hung up, and realized I had just written Kit’s phone
number.

Could that be right? Confused notions of
swapping, keys-on-the-floor,
Fred And Patricia And Carey And Kit
, mingled in my
mind with the more realistic thought that Staples was at work right now on
Laura’s murder, and this work of his had apparently brought him to an interview
with my girl.

Which meant I had a choice.
I could phone Staples to find out precisely what was going on, or I could use
that ticket to Seattle. (Replacing it first, since the original was now in a dozen pieces in
as many trash baskets.) So far, though, Seattle was still the alternate; I dialed Kit’s
number.

And Kit answered. She sounded, I thought, a
little tense. I said, “It’s me, honey. I got two messages to call.”

“Oh, hello,
Carey.” Enunciated with clarity but no warmth; announcing me to
Staples, of course.

Pretending I hadn’t a care in the world, I
said, “Feeling better, eh?”

“Yes. I guess it was one of those
twenty-four hour bugs.”

“When I get a twenty-four hour bug, it
stays a week.”

“Could I call you back, Carey? I’m a
little tied up right now.”

“With Fred Staples,” I said.
“That was my other message, he wants to talk to
me.”

“Oh? I didn’t—Hold on.”

I held on, and the next voice I heard belonged
to Fred Staples. I listened hard for nuances in that voice, changes in his
attitude toward me, but he was the same ebullient Fred as ever: “Hey,
there, Carey, how you doing?”

“Just fine,” I said.

“You never told me you had such a
terrific girl friend.”

I answered in appropriate mode: “Keeping
her for myself, Fred.”

He chuckled, then
said, “You going to be around the rest of the evening?”

“Sure.” Some long-winded explanation
of my absence from the apartment trembled on my lips, but I forced it down. The
guilty man flees, as they say, where no man pursueth. Also, there’s the fella
that protests too much.

“I’d like to drop over,” Staples was
saying. “In half an hour or so, okay?”

“Coffee or
bourbon?” (No drink with potential arrestee. )

“Mmmm…Better make it coffee.”

. Taking comfort from that hesitation, I said,
“I’ll have it waiting.” But I missed the first time, when I tried to
cradle the phone.

*

If you’re going to commit a murder—and in the
first place, I don’t recommend it—one thing you should definitely not do
afterward is have sex with the investigating officer’s wife. It merely makes
for a lot of extraneous complication.

In fact, generally speaking, it seems to me
that all police officers’ wives are better left alone. In the first place,
their husbands walk around all the time with guns. And in the second place,
there are so many other things a cop can do to you if he’s annoyed; he carries
as much power in his badge as in his pistol. So all in all I would suggest that
policemans’ wives, like nuns, should be left to Mexican bandits.

There’s nothing like ignoring your own advice.
But I hadn’t after all intended all that with Patricia Staples; it had just,
well, happened.

Whatever my intentions, though, well-armed
police officer Fred Staples was about to walk into the scene of (a) Edgarson’s
launching, and (b) his own cuckolding. No matter how much Valium or how much
bourbon I put away, I remained convinced that something, some small tiny
forgotten thing, from at least one of those misadventures would attract Fred’s
bright eye. Though I ran the vacuum cleaner, though I made the bed, though I
went over the apartment half a dozen times, I still didn’t feel secure when the
doorbell rang nearly an hour later. I wasn’t ready, but I let him in.