Home is the Sailor (6 page)

“Then
think,
Swede.” She screamed the words at me. “For both our sakes.”

“How well did you know him?” I asked.

She looked at the man on the floor with revulsion. “I didn’t know him. I went out with him once. To a Damon Runyon Cancer Fund dance in Manhattan Beach. On the way home he tried to get fresh, do what he did tonight. And I told him that I never wanted to see him again.”

“Then what were you doing in his bar last night when you met me?”

“Telling him off,” Corliss said. “To get even with me for turning him down, he’s been telling it all up and down the beach that I — well, that I’m not the sort of person I ought to be.”

“What’s his last name?” I asked her.

Corliss said, “Wolkowysk.”

“He owned his own bar?”

“I don’t know. He claimed that he did. But I doubt it. Why?”

I said, “I’m just wondering how soon he’ll be missed.”

She lifted her hair away from the back of her neck, then let it drop back in place, like a golden helmet.
“Think,
Swede, please,” she begged me. “I — I don’t want either of us to go to jail.”

“There’s no reason why you should,” I pointed out. “You’d have been justified in shooting him. Besides, you didn’t kill him. I did.”

She said, “In the eyes of the law, both of us are equally guilty.” Corliss came back into my hands again. “We didn’t mean this to happen, did we, Swede?”

“No.”

“But it has.” Corliss took my palms from her hips and pressed them against her thighs. “Think, darling. At the best this is manslaughter. And even if I go free it could mean a ten-, perhaps a twenty-year sentence for you; locked away in a cell, kissing me once a month through a screen on visiting days. Both of us slowly going mad. Then there’s another thing, Swede.”

“What’s that?”

Her voice was so low I had to lean forward to hear her. “You ought to know. Do I look like the kind of girl who would enjoy going into court and standing before a jury of twelve men and a judge, all of them smirking at me, undressing me with their eyes, thinking nasty thoughts? Do I? Do you think I would enjoy admitting, ‘Yes. Jerry Wolkowysk forced me into bed with him. My own bed. At the point of a gun. The night before I was going to be married.’ž” She flung my hands away, screaming the two words.
“Do I?”

I got up and walked across the room. I took the bottle from the shelf and let rye gurgle down my throat. “All right. That does it.”

“Does what?”

“We won’t call Sheriff Cooper. We’ll get rid of the body.”

“Where?”

I tilted the bottle again. Whisky dribbled off my chin onto my chest. I mixed it in with the sweat and hair, rubbing it with my fingers. “I don’t know. But get dressed and be ready to go. Meanwhile I’ll think of something.”

Corliss buried her face in her hands.

I opened the door and crossed the grass to my cottage, through the
re-teat, re-teat
of the crickets and the funereal smell of the flowers. I had trouble putting on my shoes and shirt and coat. I wasn’t as sober as I’d thought I was. I was glad I wasn’t. Regardless of what I did with the body, it was going to be a nasty business.

As I put on my coat, my wallet fell out of my pocket, and with it the bus ticket to Hibbing.

I looked at the ticket for a long time. Then I went back to take care of Wolkowysk.

Corliss was standing in front of her dressing table, giving her hair and make-up a quick once-over, trying to hide the swelling under her eye with face powder.

I said, “Never mind your eye. Get dressed.”

She said, “Yes, Swede,” meekly, and slipped out of her torn yellow dress. There was nothing under it but her. Long hours in the hot Southern California sun had tanned her legs and back a rich copper. But as she padded across the floor to the clothes closet it looked as if she were wearing white satin briefs.

She took a pale green dress from the closet and, holding it in front of her, she crossed the room and kissed me. “I love you, Swede.”

“I love you, Corliss,” I told her.

We kissed for a long time, straining against each other.

Then I rolled Wolkowysk in the white pile rug on which he’d died. I had to unroll him again, gagging and fighting for breath, when I remembered that his clothes were lying on the chair beside the bed.

Corliss tried to help dress him and couldn’t. Her hands shook too badly. She said, “Just the feel of his flesh makes me sick.”

I told her to sit on the bed while I dressed him. She sat on a chair instead, watching me with brooding eyes.

I put on his socks and his underwear. I zipped up his pants. I forced his arms into his shirt and coat. I tied his tie. Handling his body revolted me as much as it did Corliss. But for a different reason.

So he was only a dead man. I’d handled lots of dead men. In Africa. In Central and South America. At sea. But this dead man was different. Wolkowysk was my baby. This one was charged to me. So far it was only manslaughter. But once I dumped his body, no one would believe our story. It was up to me to do a good job of hiding him. For my own sake. If and when his body was found, the tab would read first degree.

When I had him dressed I went to the head and lost the rye. Then I rolled him in the white rug again, being careful to wad most of it around his head to keep blood from dripping on the floor while I carried him out the side door opening into the carport and put him in the turtle back of Corliss’ green Caddy.

I locked the turtle back and, at Corliss’ suggestion, we went over the cottage on our hands and knees, looking for anything of Wolkowysk’s I might have missed.

“I’ll buy a new rug the first thing in the morning,” she said.

I found his gun on the floor and put it in my pocket. Then I found a few spots of blood where he had leaked through the rug.

Corliss got to her feet, tense with strain. “Now what, Swede?”

I told her to wipe the table, the lamp, the doorknob, anything that he might have touched, while I wiped up the blood on the floor with cold water.

I was glad the deck was asphalt tile and heavily waxed. As far as I could tell, none of the blood had sunk in. When I finished wiping the floor I wrapped the rag I had used with newspaper and put it in my pocket, along with Wolkowysk’s gun.

My shoes squished when I walked. My heavy uniform coat was as wet as if I’d swum a mile in it.

Corliss was as nervous as I was. She tried twice to fasten the straps of her silver sandals. I finally had to fasten them for her. She caught her fingers in my hair and pushed my head back. “Have you thought of anything, Swede? I mean, about him?”

“No,” I admitted. “I haven’t. How clean are we to start with?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did anyone see him come in here?”

Corliss’ fingers tightened in my hair. “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

I stood up and gripped her shoulders. “Be positive.”

“I am. Wally had been gone a good five minutes when I heard the knock on the door. I thought it was Wally coming back. That’s why I unlocked the door.” Her face screwed up as if she were going to scream. “Then he—”

I shook her until her head bobbled. “Stop it. It’s over. He’s dead. Forget it.”

Corliss’ fingernails bit into my forearms. “I’ll try. Honest I will, Swede.”

“What time was it when he came in?”

“I’d say half past two.”

“The bar was open or closed?”

“It should have been closed a half hour. Mamie always closes it promptly. She doesn’t like to work back of the bar.”

“What’s her last name?”

“Meek. She manages the court for me. Her husband is the gardener.”

“A little man in blue dungarees and a gray sweater?”

“That would describe him. But why the interest in the Meeks?”

I said, “I’m just trying to cover all the angles. Mamie was in the bar tonight. So was Wolkowysk. Would he be apt to confide in her that he was going to call on you?”

Corliss shook her head. “No. I only went out with Jerry the one time. Mamie wouldn’t know him from any other customer in the bar.”

I got her a camel’s-hair coat from the closet and walked her out to the green Cadillac. Then I eased out of the carport as quietly as I could and pointed the car north on U.S. 101, a vague plan forming in my mind. I drove for perhaps five miles, neither of us speaking, being careful to observe the legal maximum. Then I thought of something I should have remembered and jammed on the brakes so hard that a big Diesel trailer almost rammed us.

Corliss caught at my arm. “Now what?”

I gasped, “His car. It’s a cinch Wolkowysk didn’t walk from Laguna Beach to the Purple Parrot. His car
has
to be back there.”

Fear had numbed her brain. “Back where?”

“In front of the Purple Parrot.” I shouted the words at her as I swung the car in a sharp U turn and drove back the five miles we had come at ninety miles an hour, cursing the big Diesel trucks making the night haul up to Los Angeles, their drivers blinking their lights and blasting their horns at me.

There were two cars in front of the dark bar. One was a beaten-up Ford. Corliss said it belonged to Wally. The other was a ’47 gray Buick super with the keys in the ignition and a pink registry slip made out to Gerald Wolkowysk in a glassine case on the steering column.

I leaned against the Buick smoking a cigarette, listening to the sounds of the crickets, getting my breath back, letting my idea grow.

Then in a lull between trucks I took Wolkowysk out of the turtle back. I unrolled the rug and put it back in the Caddy for future disposal. I’d caved in the left side of Wolkowysk’s head. The right side didn’t look too bad. If I pulled his hat over his eyes he could pass for drunk. I put him in the right-hand front seat of the Buick and pulled his hat over his eyes.

Corliss watched me in silence, her breasts rising and falling unnaturally fast.

When I had Wolkowysk arranged to suit me, I motioned her under the wheel of the Caddy. “You drive. Follow me.”

She whispered, “Where?”

“To that turnoff where we parked.”

She brushed my face with the tips of her fingers. “Whatever you say, Swede.”

I slid behind the wheel of the Buick and eased it out onto the highway, back the way we had come, driving slowly now, making certain I dimmed my lights for every approaching car and observing what few stop signs there were. I didn’t want to be picked up for a traffic violation. Not with the cargo I was carrying.

There was little traffic on the road. Nothing but trucks rolling north to L.A. and others rolling south to Dago, plus a few early-rising fishermen. Nearing the turnoff I slowed still more. When I reached it I turned off my lights. I hoped Corliss would think to do the same. I didn’t want any nosy highway cop investigating our headlights. At least, not until I’d got rid of Wolkowysk.

The fog was thicker here. I drove through it slowly toward the top of the cliff and the cluster of wind-distorted trees under which Corliss and I had parked. When I figured I’d gone far enough, I stopped and set the hand brake. Then I got out of the car and paced the distance to the lip of the cliff. It was a little more than two hundred feet across level solid rock.

I stood near the edge and looked down. The drop was as sheer as I remembered it. Three hundred feet down the waves pounded against a confusion of jagged rocks, the white water sucking in and out of the caves that the sea and time had worn in the base of the cliff.

A cold hand touched mine. I jumped. Then I saw it was Corliss. She’d turned off her lights without being told. The Cadillac was parked a short distance back of the Buick. There was no one to hear her, but she whispered, her whisper almost carried away by the wind. “What are you going to do, Swede?”

I said, “I’m not going to do anything. But Wolkowysk got stinking drunk in your bar last night. So drunk he drove his car off a cliff.”

Corliss’ fingernails dug into my back as she kissed me. Her kiss was a prayer, a wish on a star. “What can I do, Swede?”

I said, “Stand five feet from the edge of the cliff. As close to the path of the car as you dare.”

She protested, “But I want to help.”

Tension began to build in me like steam in a boiler, until I was afraid I’d blow my top any minute. “You will be helping,” I snarled. “When I’m even with you, I’ll jump. Take off your coat. That dress will show up better in the fog.”

She dropped her coat and stood where I’d told her to stand. I walked back to the Buick, stiff-kneed, wishing that Wolkowysk hadn’t been such a cheap sonofabitch. If he’d laid out the extra money for Dynaflow, goosing the car over the cliff would be simple.

Wolkowysk hadn’t gone for a walk. His smashed head still lolled on the seat back. I cursed him as I took the newspaper-wrapped rag from my pocket. I threw the paper away and used the rag to wipe my fingerprints off the wheel. When I was certain the wheel was clean I pulled his stiffening body under it and bent his fingers around the wheel.

The fog was thicker now, a wall of gray between me and the lip of the cliff. I hoped I could see Corliss in time to jump. I made certain the car was in neutral. Then I released the emergency brake, turned on the ignition, and stepped on the accelerator.

The car would idle fine. Finding a way to feed it gas was another matter. I solved the problem by wedging Wolkowysk’s right foot in such a way that when I pushed on his left shoulder his foot would depress the gas pedal. I tried it a couple of times, making the motor roar, so I could be sure it would work.

My back ached by the time I was set. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. But I had to go through with it now. I pushed the left front door open until the catch held it. Then, standing on the sliver of running board on my left foot, my right foot depressing the clutch pedal, I switched on the lights, shifted the car into second gear, took my foot off the clutch, and pushed hard on Wolkowysk’s shoulder.

The car darted forward like a startled dolphin sighting a shark, me helping Wolkowysk steer with my left hand. When I saw Corliss I jumped backward, pushing myself away from the car — and almost didn’t make it.