One Fearful Yellow Eye (12 page)

She sat glaring at me. I smiled and said, "I gave you a cheap opportunity to put the knock on him, Mrs. Stanyard. Just checking."

Anger changed to a puzzled indignation. "Why do that? What's the point?"

"I guess the point is that he would have left around seven hundred thousand and something, but he canceled out his insurance for the cash value, and he cashed in everything else too, except a small equity in the house and a life annuity option policy for Gloria that'll bring her ninety something a week. It took him thirteen months. He finished the job last July. He did it on the sly and covered his tracks. The money is gone and everybody is upset, each one for his own reasons.

So when I find out that the Doctor and his favorite nurse had an affair going for ten or eleven years and then he married somebody else, I want to see if there is enough hate left for the nurse to leap at the chance to lay a little bad-mouth on the famous surgeon."

"She told you about Fort and me?"

"She did."

"She had no right!"

"Heidi mentioned it first. I think she said she was twelve years old when she saw you and the Doctor necking. And just how much poking around would I have to do, amid the medical brotherhood and sisterhood; before somebody mentioned old times?"

"You make it sound dirty!"

"Do you know how it sounds to me?"

"I can't imagine caring."

"It sounds as if it was a very good thing for two lonely people to have. I think you are much woman, Mrs. Stanyard. I know where your husband is. I know Gloria thinks the affair ended a year or two before she met Fort. If he could change six hundred thousand in assets into cash and put the cash where nobody can find it, keeping you on the string would be no special problem."

"He wasn't that kind of man. I'm not that kind of woman. I didn't even know, if he told her about me. But from the way I acted toward her when they came back from Florida, she certainly would have had to guess something. I like her very much."

"He told her. In detail."

"And she told you. I don't think I care at all for her telling you."

"After what Heidi said, she had to tell me something. And the detail was so I'd understand. She was anxious to make sure I didn't think less of Fort or of you. Of course, I go around making these moral judgments all the time. Meaningful relationship. That phrase has sure God been worked to death. Like constructive and sincere. What it is, Janice, it's a curious, confusing bitch of a world, and you don't get a very long ride on it, and it is hard to get through to anybody merely by making mouth-sounds. So we all do some taking, up to the point where we don't gag on it. And we all do some giving, because taking doesn't taste right without it. With any luck we can sneak through without crapping up too many other lives, and with a little more luck we can make things shine for somebody sometime."

As she was staring at me, a chunky Siamese cat, a pale one like tea with cream, came in through the door that probably led to the bedroom. He stretched each hind leg separately, gave me casual inspection with eyes as blue as his mistress's, though slightly crossed, came over and snuffed at my shoes, and went on out to, the kitchen, indolently purposeful.

"Who are you?" Janice asked me.

"T. McGee. T for Travis. Friend of Glory." I motioned toward the kitchen. "Who was that who went through?"

"Ralph. Maybe I made things shine for Fort. My husband will be a four-year-old child as long as he lives. There was that much damage. I visit Charlie every week. I'm a quiet person. I don't require much of life. After Fort and I became lovers, I couldn't understand why I'd put up such a desperate fight for my so-called honor. Maybe I thought that if someone made love to me, I'd start to resent Charlie. I didn't want that. Fort needed me: My God, there was a man I would have crawled through broken glass for, jumped out windows for. And I couldn't willingly give
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him something... nobody was using and Charlie wouldn't miss. But Fort made it happen anyway, bless him. And then all of a sudden it was just something two people could have. Closeness and pleasure, and all the ordinary little things. Socks and shaving and reminding him of haircuts, and waking up and hearing somebody breathing beside you, feeling the warmth of their body near you. When he wanted me, I wanted him because he wanted me. It was like a voyage, I guess. We traveled from one place in our lives to another, and then what we needed from each other was over. I never made any demand on him after it was over. Sometimes I would wish he was with me so I could tell him some dumb thing, like how my alarm clock finally quit-he hated it. It had a terrible ring. I'm a heavy sleeper. Once, after he was married, I did ask him to come here. He came as soon as he could. He knew it wasn't... what some -small-minded man might have guessed it could be. It was a year ago last May. On Memorial Day. I didn't know if I should report it, or what I should do.

"Report what?"

"I went to see Charlie and I got back at ten-thirty at night. When I went into the kitchen there was my poor old Ethel cat dead in the middle of the floor. She was Ralph's mother. Somebody had put a big meat skewer out of the drawer right through her, just behind the shoulder, right through her heart, and left it in her. It was such a horrid, pointless thing to do. A very sick mind, certainly. There was still some warmth in her body, and all the blood was not clotted on the tile floor. I'd left a kitchen light on, knowing it would be after dark when I got back, and they like a light to eat by when they get hungry. Ralph is like Ethel was. They leave a little in their dish and go back and have a little snack every now and then. There's a ladder that is fastened to the outside of the building and it passes right by the kitchen window. The weather forecast said no rain, so I'd left the bottom sash all the way open. Somebody had kicked the screen out and come in through the window in the night. It wouldn't be hard to do. Poor Ralph scrunched down in the back of my closet on my shoes, still growling, and terrified. Fort answered the phone and he got here at eleven-thirty. I was a mess, of course. It upset him terribly too. Ethel had been very fond of him."

"Did you report it?"

"We decided not to. I'm not a sissy usually, but I was all shaken up. I packed an overnight bag and Fort dropped me at a hotel. He had wrapped poor Ethel up in an old sheet. I couldn't find any damage beyond the broken screen, and nothing seemed to be missing. He put Ethel in the trunk of his car, and the next day we buried her at a place down on Marley Creek where we used to have picnics sometimes. I had the super come and look at the broken screen. He was upset.

But he wasn't going to do anything about it. I had people come and put steel mesh on that window and I told the other people who had windows close to that ladder what had happened and what I'd done about it, and what it had cost."

She stopped, frowned at me, shook,her head. "What in the world could the Doctor have done with six hundred thousand dollars in cash? It wouldn't be like him to do something like that."

"Could his illness affect his mind?"

"Oh no. And the few times I saw him, toward the end, he was perfectly all right. He knew he'd never get out of that bed. The pain was bad and getting worse, but he decided he'd rather fight it than be so drugged he couldn't communicate with anyone." "And he was an honest man?"

"Certainly. Oh, he didn't make a big thing of it, and go around glowing with righteousness-you know the type."

"Mrs. Stanyard? Janice?"

"Janice is fine."

"You didn't know a thing about the missing money. But you can count on other people getting around to you before very long."

"I don't understand."

"Excuse the bluntness, but when the wife and children get dealt out, they dig up the past, and you are the ex-mistress, the trite old triangle of doctor, wife, and nurse."

"But it..."

"I know it wasn't like that. But for seven of the thirteen months he was cashing things in, you were working with him."

"Not anything like the way we used to work, tluough. No routine things at all, no matter how intricate. He was sort of... wrapping up what he knew and what he was still learning. His postoperative dictation was about twice as long as it had ever been, because he was making suggestions ahout alternative techniques he knew he was never going to have time to attempt. He wanted to leave something other surgeons could use. And he wanted to spend as much time as he could with Ocrria and his grandchildren."

"Do you remember anything at all strange during those seven months? Any mysterious letters or visits, phone calls? Did he seem troubled?"

"No. But he didn't trouble easily, you know. He had his own philosophy about worry. He always told me that people spend so much time fretting about what they did yesterday and dreading what might happen tomorrow, they miss out on all of their todays. He said that when you realize you can't change the past or predict the future, then you come alive for the first time, like waking, up from half-sleep."

"You might be questioned by people who are better at it than I am, and a lot more merciless."

"Why do you say that?"

"They'll catch you up a lot quicker when you lie about having no contact with Fort from January to when you visited him.at his home."

"Lie! I swear to you I did not see him once during that time."

"That isn't what I said. A contact is not necessarily a confrontation."

"I don't have to take this, you know."

"Phone? Letter?"

"Damn you!" She stood up and went to the windows, stood there with her back to the room.

Her anger made a pink tint on the pallor of her neck below the graying hair. I went over and
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stood behind her and to her left. The sky above the distant parking plaza was as gray as the asphalt. Three kids were running diagonally across the lot, a big yellow dog loping along with them.

"Use your head, Janice. If you don't know how to handle it with me, how can you expect to handle it when the cold winds really start to blow?"

"He had reasons for everything he did."

"And never miscalculated? Never made an error? Do you really believe that he wanted Gloria to be persecuted, treated as a suspicious person and watched and followed the rest of her life?"

She turned and stared up into my eyes. "Will it be like that?"

"Not if it was six thousand or sixty thousand. It's six hundred thousand. It hasn't hit the news yet.

The bank and the lawyers and the tax people have kept the lid on it. Fort's mind was clouded in one way. I can draw pictures for you. There have been people killed in this happy village for forty cents. No matter how carefully the missing money is reported, there are going to be some types sitting around wondering which way and how soon they'll pick up the bride and take her to a cozy place and treat her pretty little feet with lighter fluid. They'll think that either she knows or she doesn't, but that much cash is worth the try. She'll end up in the river wrapped in scrap iron either way."

Her eyes widened and her throat bulged as she dry-swallowed twice, and, with her color going bad, she braced a hand against the window frame and closed her eyes for a moment. I asked her if she was going to faint.

"No. I don't faint. It was just the idea anybody... could do that to Gloria Geis."

"And if she doesn't know, there's always Heidi and then Roger and then you. It's big loot, and it is in the handiest form loot comes in. You don't have to fence it."

Her color was better. She swallowed again. "I... I guess I do have some of it. Not here. It's in my box at the bank. The letter is here. But I don't think it will mean anything, and it says not to tell anybody. But, as you say, I don't think he realized what could happen... Excuse me."

She went over to a desk and opened a drawer. and sorted through a half-box of new stationery, riffling it with her thumb until she came to the letter. She looked at it before she handed it to me.

She shook her head. "I hate what happened to his muscular control. His hands were so good."

It was small, shaky, uncertain writing, but reasonably legible. It was dated the previous August eleventh.

Janice, dear,

Put this in your lock box at your bank.

I have gotten word to someone to come to you in case of emergency. You will find out what might have to be done. Use the money for that purpose. You will understand why I couldn't ask G for this kind of help. If no one comes to you within a year of my death, please get the money to G. I would write more, but it is hard to write. I know I impose. Thanks for many things, and
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thanks for this.

Fortner

"It's ten thousand dollars," she said. "In hundred dollar bills, mostly. It was in a manila envelope wrapped with rubber bands inside another manila envelope. I think he thought it was ten thousand even, but it was a hundred dollars short. It came in the regular mail."

"You saw him after that. Did you mention the note and the money?"

"When I started to, he closed his eyes and shook his head. Gloria was out of the room just then."

I read it once more and gave it back to her to put away. "Not a clue," I said. "Some unknown person may or may not come to you for help, and if they come, they'll tell you what kind of help they need. Isn't that just dandy? Only five hundred and ninety thousand to go."

"I wish I could help. I really do."

She meant it. Sincerity and conviction, and a great directness. But I had to come to the usual screeching halt. I didn't have her lashed up to a polygraph with a good man watching the styluses or styli or whatever the hell the proper plural might be. Pen points, maybe. And I didn't know if she was one of the small percentage who can fool the polygraph every time. In a world of plausible scoundrels and psychopathic liars, hunch can take you only so far.

I have to keep remembering at all times that sweet little old lady on the veranda in Charleston, South Carolina, the one who told me the story of her life in a sighing little voice, a story so sad that my eyes were misty and my voice thick by the time she shot at me with the Luger she was holding in her lap under the corner of her shawl. The slug took a little bite out of the side of the collar of my white shirt and exposed a dime-sized piece of blue necktie.