Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll (15 page)

As I turned to walk away my shoe bumped the doorframe. It was a small noise, but Evelyn Rinke turned, a hand at her throat, a flat cry on her lips.

I stepped inside the bedroom so she could identify me. She was wearing the same nightgown she had had on the night before.

“Pete?”

“Yes.”

“You — startled me.” I saw the movement of her throat muscles.

“I was just looking around,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Please don’t go, Pete.”

“Maybe it would be better if I did.”

“No — I wanted somebody to talk to. I can’t sleep. It’s useless, trying to sleep. Please, Pete — a cigarette?”

I took a pack from my shirt pocket, shook one free for her. I lit it for her.

“Thanks, Pete.” She turned toward the windows again, her cheeks flattening as she drew on the cigarette. There were tired lines under her eyes. “I’ve lived through another day,” she said with a tone of wonder. “Now I have to face another. Tell me, Pete, was it that way with you? Did you hate to see another day coming?”

“Usually.” My voice was rough with a sympathy I couldn’t conceal.

“I slept this morning,” she said. “Two whole hours. That’s really... a triumph, you know. The rest of the day, I sat and let my nerves fight it out. I wondered what it would be like to kill myself. I wondered if I would feel any regret, in that last tenth part of a second.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About four years. It didn’t come all at once. It was like a slow tightening. Days when I didn’t feel quite right. Then one day it seemed as if I was hit by a big fist. Some of the nerves came loose. There’s one now, twisting down my side until I think I’ll go crazy.”

She put a hand to her side, her face lined as if she were going to cry. She stretched out her arms, fingers against the metal slats of the Venetian blinds. Her breasts heaved fretfully beneath their frail covering.

“I’ve thought about it, Pete,” she said. “I’ve had little to do but think about why, why, why I should be like this.”
The cigarette wasn’t doing anything for her any more. She turned from the windows to put it in an ashtray, then came back.

“Charley loved me,” she said softly. “Once. Charley had a brilliant mind. He still does. But there’s something inside him. Something obscene. He takes pleasure in knowing the wrong kind of men, sharing their secrets. We drifted into this kind of life. He stuck fast to it, gave up a good-paying job. It’s too late for him to go back now. All the good is gone now. I smell the evil that seeps through his skin from associating with people like... Macy Barr. There isn’t any way for me to get away. I think he’d kill me if I tried now. Devotion turned to possession; tenderness to lust. It was when I began to realize this that the fist began to pound me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“Pete,” she said with a dry sob, “I can’t even cry any more. I’m just a crazy cardboard cutout of a woman. I loathe the man I can’t get away from. The people who live around me sicken my stomach. My nerves torture me, all the time.” Her mouth was petulant. She put her hands flat against her stomach, smoothed the nightgown close to her skin, pressing the hands as far as her rounded thighs. “I haven’t slept with him in months and months. The thought of him touching me makes me retch.” She was whispering now. “I’ve tried others. They... handled me as though I were a common streetwalker. It was no good — no good at all.”

She reached out and took my hand, laid it against her side. “Can’t you feel it? It twists and turns and jumps — they’re knots and coils, tight and squirming — ” She let go of my hand. She took the nightgown in both hands,
twisted it, tore it, an expression of anguish on her glistening face. The gown was ripped, it hung away from her slim body. She fell against me, kissing me anywhere her lips touched my flesh. Her cheeks were hot and wet. “Make them still,” she said urgently. “Give me rest, Pete. You can do it. Do it — do it.”

I should have forced her away then but I hesitated an instant, and when the instant had passed it was too late. She was keyed to the point of hysteria. I was afraid of what might happen if I left her then.

“It won’t be an answer,” I whispered as I put her on the bed. “For a little while, maybe. That’s all.” Then I couldn’t say any more. She moaned once and held me tightly, tightly, with all her strength.

When I left her, she was sleeping. Even in sleep the tenseness hadn’t left her features. I wished I could help her. But there was nothing I could do. It was a lonely struggle. She would be the only winner, or the only loser.

I went downstairs and walked toward my room. Beyond the French doors I saw a man standing on the patio. From the size of him I knew it must be Taggart. He stood there without moving for half a minute, smoking slowly. Then he dropped the cigarette, walked down the terrace toward the bay.

I opened the doors and stepped outside. Taggart had reached the sand. I could see him against the sheen of moonlight on the water. He walked along at the edge of the tide, his head turned toward the bay as if he were searching for something. He carried a large towel over one arm.

When he passed from sight around a bend in the
island, I walked away from the house toward a growth of trees that covered the northern tip of the island. Most of the tangle of scrub had been cleared from among the palms, and hardy grass matted the rocky ridge of land almost to the slap of the waves.

Through the bent shadowy trunks with their saw-toothed thatching I picked up Taggart again. This time he wasn’t alone. In a sheltered cove he extended the towel to a naked, dripping Diane. Her hair was silver in the moonlight, the lift of her arm liquid. Taggart didn’t take his eyes off her as she dried herself, turning to cape the towel across her back, lifting one foot and then the other to the grasp of it. When she had finished she spread the towel on the wind-decked sand, lay down on it.

Taggart turned his head to follow her movements as she laid down on the towel. His hands came up unhurriedly and he unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, folded it and put it beside the towel. Then he unbuckled his pants, stepped out of them. When he had finished undressing he lowered himself to her.

I was about to trudge back to the house when I noticed a movement behind one of the trees not more than ten yards from where Taggart and the blonde Diane embraced. It was a man, shifting his weight very slowly to obtain a better view, taking care not to be heard. I put a hand on the square butt of the .38, then relaxed. The observer had turned his body just enough for me to recognize him. It was Owen Barr. I strained my eyes toward the tree behind which he had concealed himself, but I couldn’t see him any more.

I was a little surprised at the eagerness with which Diane was receiving the huge, slow-witted gunman. I had
a feeling this was only a repetition of other meetings between them. Then I grinned a bit wryly, realizing it didn’t make much difference, and went back to my room.

Once there I felt I could use a drink and walked to the living room, helped myself to a bottle of good Scotch from the bar there. I took that and a glass of ice with four fingers of soda back to the bedroom, propped myself up on the bed and had a long cold one in the dark.

I thought about the strange crew assembled in this house. They made my head hurt. Sleep poured down on me like an avalanche. Before I was buried in it there was a warm clear light shining through the murkiness of twisted, pulped lives. Elaine. I reached out to her, forgetting all the rest.

I don’t know how long I slept. When I awakened I stared into darkness as if I hadn’t been sleeping at all, just dozing. I listened to a ratlike scratching, located the source of the sound near the dresser. I thought I heard someone breathing. Without moving on the bed I took my .38 from the nearby table, transferred it to my left hand. I reached up and found the light switch, turned on the lamp.

Owen Barr lurched away from the dresser, turned to me with a foolish grin. He took his hand out of the top drawer but kept it pressed against the front of the dresser for support.

“Well,” he said, his lips loose, his eyes feverishly jovial, “am I in the wrong room? Huh?”

“It would seem that way.” I kept the automatic pointed at him.

He gestured stickily with his free hand, listed unsteadily.
I wondered if he was as drunk as he was trying to make out.

“Well, ’scuse me,” Owen said, sniffing wetly. He took a step forward, but had to return to his support. “Y’see, I was looking for whisky. I thought this was my room, ‘r somethin’.”

“Sure.”

He pointed. “Y’got some whisky over there.”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

He blinked. Then he leered knowingly. “Never have enough whisky.”

I put my fingers around the bottle, without looking away from him and heaved it suddenly in his direction. He caught it with surprising deftness.

“Well,” he said, licking his lips. “Well, thanks.”

“Suppose you could drink it someplace else?”

“Oh, sure,” he said airily. He put both hands around the bottle and set a course for the door, pausing once to lean against the wall. Then he was gone and I heard him mumbling in the hall. The door to his room clicked shut.

I got up and looked into the hall. He was gone, all right. I shut my own door and looked at the drawer Owen had been fumbling through. There was nothing in it but the large envelope containing the newspaper clippings Macy had turned over to me. The envelope had been opened. A couple of the clippings were loose in the bottom of the drawer. I assembled all of them, counted. There were only three stories about the fire left. I wondered what Owen was going to do with the other one. But I didn’t really care.

Clouds boiled in off the Atlantic early next morning and it rained until after lunch, then cleared off.

In the afternoon some of us, including Macy and Evelyn Rinke, put on suits and went swimming. Taggart, Diane, and Charley Rinke didn’t participate. They sat together on the terrace and drank Planter’s Punch and Salty Dogs. Diane’s face was as bland as ever. She paid no attention to Taggart. Now and then he would look at her over his lifted glass, a hint of pleasure in his eyes. Rinke was sprawled on a chaise longue, as if his long hours in the hidden room in the garage had depleted him. The lines of his down-turned mouth were still sharp, though. He looked as if he played lightly and skillfully with thoughts. Like juggled steel splinters, they could be potentially dangerous if he wasn’t careful with them. He seemed to be the sort of man who would be careful.

“I thought you liked swimming,” I said to Diane, on my way to the beach.

“Too choppy now,” she said with a disinterested smile. “I don’t like the feel of salt water in my throat.” She was wearing shorts and another of those colorful half-sleeve shirts, this one of lime green. I shook my head in answer to her offer of a drink, went on down to the beach.

Aimee had a pair of swim fins and a face mask and she and Macy were diving for shells about twenty feet from shore. For all his awkward weight, Macy was a good
swimmer, but his lungs couldn’t stand all the work. In a few minutes he had to come out to rest, his face looking fatigued. Aimee scooted through the water gracefully, slanting deep with a kick of the wedge-shaped fins.

Evelyn Rinke sat at the edge of the water, where her feet were covered at each small rise of wave. Her hair was combed and she had put on some lipstick.

I kneeled beside her. “Feeling all right today?”

She nodded. “Um-hmm. Reasonably. The sun feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Have you been in the water yet?”

“No. It feels sort of cold. I don’t know if I’d like it. I haven’t been swimming in a long time. Most of the time I stay close to the house—”

I offered a hand to her. “Try it.”

She smiled faintly. “Well — ” Her hard fingers closed about my hand. “All right. I think I will.” We went into the water together. She gasped in dismay. “Oh, Pete!”

“Plunge in. You’ll get used to it.” She splashed me as she put her arms together and dived down. I followed her. She swam uncertainly at first, then more strongly. Aimee treaded water nearby, watching us.

“Not so bad, is it?” I said, gliding up to Evelyn. She smiled broadly, her face streaming. “It’s awfully cold,” she said, “but I like it.” She lunged toward me suddenly, reached out and pushed my head under. I went deeper in the pale green water, grasped her ankles, tugged her toward the bottom. Her hair waved loosely behind her, a bubble or two escaping from her lips. She made a grab for me but I twisted out of the way. She went above water for air.

“Not fair,” she complained, laughing. “I’m not used to
the exercise.” She floated on her back for a few minutes, eyes closed, face relaxed.

Aimee’s head bobbed up close by. She lifted the face mask. “Want to look for seashells?” she said timidly. So we looked for seashells. After a while Evelyn joined us. We crawled along close to the bottom, fingers searching the sand until it became impossible to see and we had to surface and wait for the water to clear. Once Aimee saw a small fish and sprinted after it, turning quickly in the water as she tried to duplicate the delicate fin-flip of the silvered fish.

We had been in the water about an hour when Macy bellowed, “Aimee! Diane says you better come in now.” We all went in. Evelyn walked closed beside me as we waded ashore, bumping against me when her feet slipped on the uneven sand bottom. Then she stopped and held my wrist so I would have to stop too.

“Pete,” she said, “I really had fun. For the first time in a long time. I didn’t know anything could be fun any more.”

I smiled at her. “Give yourself a chance once in a while.”

She shuddered, putting her arms across her breasts. There was a stiff breeze and it was chilly after coming out of the water. “Here?” she said, looking toward the house, where her husband loafed on the chaise longue. A little of the old pain seemed to be returning to her. “Anyway, for a little while it was nice. Thanks, Pete. I guess I’ll try to get a nap now.” She walked on a few steps, feet splashing in the shallow water. Then she turned and looked at me again, not saying anything. I caught up with her and we walked to the house together, past the drinking set on the patio.