The Four Johns (8 page)

“Who can escape destiny?” The photographer raised his glass and drained it. “Everything that has been, and is, and that is to be, is ordained. If vulgarity be my fate, I embrace it!”

“The secret of a contented life,” said little Callahan in his big voice.

Harriet snorted. “I can't accept that, Viviano. Scientists don't believe in predestination. There's a very important principle opposed to it—something about uncertainty.”

“Ah,” said Viviano. “But one moment. Boce, be a good fellow and replenish this glass with some of your splendid whiskey. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, uncertainty. Utter drivel. Provide me a sufficiently complex computer sufficiently programmed, and I guarantee to predict the future!”

“You know I don't have access to any such computer,” Harriet whined. “And anyway, I don't think it's possible.” She turned to the man sitting beside Susie. “Mike, you're a physicist. Which of us is right?”

Mike looked embarrassed. “In essence the universe itself is just such a computer. By the interaction of its parts it solves the equations of its own future. But a man-made computer …” He shook his head. “As for uncertainty, it's a figure of speech, although I admit there are transcendentalists in the profession who claim that uncertainty is a built-in factor of reality. I personally feel that the easiest way to learn the future is to watch it happen.”

Everyone digested this wisdom, uncertainly.

“What of precognition?” asked Harriet. “I know a marvelous woman, a Negro with orange hair. She can look at some object you own and tell you the most amazing things about your past—what you're thinking, what's going to happen to you.”

“Heh, heh!” snickered Viviano. “Now who believes in predestination!” He strode into the kitchen, from which he could be heard accusing John Boce of niggardly bartending.

“What a volatile man,” sighed Harriet.

Calm descended on the room. Mervyn sat limply, staring into his highball glass. The conversation receded; a sense of fantasy overcame him.

Something tugged at his mind. The urgent unpleasantness that had brought him back to Berkeley. Recollection came as a shock. He glanced toward the kitchen, where Boce was still occupied. So he rose, mumbled an all-inclusive farewell and left in a hurry.

At his own apartment he found, as Boce had claimed, that the door was unlocked. This was not unusual; he frequently neglected to lock his door. Still, it made him uneasy. He locked it now, switched on the light, pulled the drapes. Standing in the middle of the living room, he looked around carefully. The room seemed normal, but to Mervyn's abraded senses it
felt
wrong.

Moving stealthily, as if something dangerous were asleep nearby, he looked under the couch. Nothing. He went to the bookcase, felt behind his books. Nothing. He walked into his bedroom, braced himself, and switched on the lights. The room, which Mervyn maintained in monastic neatness, looked undisturbed.

Nevertheless, he peered under the bed. Nothing. He turned to his chest of drawers, but the sliding doors of the wardrobe caught his eye. There was a dark gap at the right-hand side. Had he left it that way? He hesitated. It was as if there were another personality in the room, broadcasting malice. Well, he could not stand there all night.… He strode forward, slid the door aside, ready for anything.

The light shone on his clothes. Below, a rack held his shoes. The shelf above held oddments, a glint of white. Unfamiliar.… Mervyn reached up with a leaden arm.

A white purse.

Mary's purse.

So.

He filled his lungs. The pattern was now clear.

It had been assumed that when the green convertible was picked up, the police would find the body. They would naturally question Mervyn, seek to establish his movements. They would search his apartment, find the purse. Mervyn would be arrested, probably put on trial, possibly convicted, conceivably sentenced to the gas chamber. Mervyn shuddered.

For a moment he stood looking at the purse. Then he opened it and peered inside. Lipstick, mirror, comb, change purse, wallet with various cards. No money. Mervyn's lips tightened: suppose his enemy had marked Mary's money in some fashion and also hidden it on the premises? The idea was ridiculous, oversubtle; still, Mervyn looked around, even went into the kitchen to investigate the coffee can where he tossed small change. Nothing. His imagination was running away with him. He smiled sadly. Rather hard for his imagination to run faster or farther than events themselves.

One matter at least was straightened out: the fate of his few lingering qualms. Mary Hazelwood was dead and gone. A pity, but his own life was now on the line.

He opened a kitchen drawer and took out a twist of plastic clothesline, which he put in his pocket. Mary's purse he tucked into the front of his trousers, then he buttoned his jacket and stepped out into the court.

He walked quickly past Apartment 1, but not quickly enough. Before he could reach the street, the door opened and people spilled out.

“Mervyn!” John Boce bawled. “Hey, Mervyn, hold up a minute!”

Mervyn managed to resist the almost irresistible desire to punch the accountant in the nose.

“How about taking Mike and Charlotte home?” Boce asked. “It's just over on North Side.”

Mervyn could think of nothing to say. He waited while Boce affably conducted the physicist and his wife to the entrance.

“I hope we're not putting you out, Mr. Gray,” Mike said.

“Of course not!” Boce declared heartily. “It's a pleasure for Mervyn.”

“Thank you so much, John,” Charlotte said.

“Think nothing of it. Good night!”

“My car is up the street,” Mervyn said. “Around the corner.”

“This is very good of you, Mervyn. Our car is out of commission, but John insisted that we come.”

“I don't mind in the slightest.”

Mike and Charlotte lived a mile away. Mervyn dropped them at their apartment house and drove back around the campus. He turned east along Ashby Avenue, and presently swung into the Contra Costa Freeway. Something pressed against his stomach, something large and uncomfortable: Mary's purse. He had forgotten about it. He yanked it out and tossed it to the seat beside him.

A new thought occurred to him and he stopped the car under an overhead light. He opened the purse and went through it until he found a small black address book. He flicked through the pages.

Name after name after name, in Mary's neat, erect handwriting. He hunted for Johns. Under
B
, John Boce. (Under
G
he found Mervyn Gray.) The next John was under
P
: John Pilgrim. John Thompson was not listed. John Viviano was there, with a San Francisco address and telephone number.

There were no other Johns noted.

Mervyn replaced the book in the purse, drove on.

The road led through forested rolling hills and sleeping suburbs, north around the foot of Mount Diablo. The Freeway came to an end, the hills dried out and became mineral in the moonlight. He crossed them and came down into farmland, with a line of small cities spaced along the shores of the mingled San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers. The country turned quieter, more rural; vineyards and orchards closed in along the road.

Then the country changed again. The land became flat, the air smelled of swamp: willow trees, rushes, damp peat. The road, now narrow and potholed, twisted to the right and swung up steeply.

He was now driving along a levee, water glinting on his left.

The air was still and bland; not far away, six lonesome lights marked a harbor for pleasure craft and fishing boats. He crossed a timber-and-plank bridge. He drove for miles along the levee, and now there were no lights. When he came to another bridge, also of timber and plank, he stopped the car. The only sounds were the tick of his engine, the hissing of crickets, the occasional burp of a frog.

He got out and walked slowly across the bridge; the moon, now riding the zenith, laid oily cusps and crescents on the water. He climbed down the bank, brought up a thirty-pound chunk of riprap.

Now came the worst part of the job. The terrible part.

Mervyn drove to the middle of the bridge, got out, unlocked the trunk. Below, the dark water waited in puddles of moonlight. He braced himself, pulled the body out. In spite of his efforts, it dropped to the planking with a thud. Wincing, he made a bundle of the purse and the rock, wrapping them in the mat from the floor of the trunk and tying the whole thing securely with the plastic clothesline. Then he ran a short length of the line from the bundle to the neck of the dead girl.…

Now.

But he hesitated. How undignified, how graceless an end for one so sweet and vital! Mervyn's eyes filled with tears. He looked up at the moon, down at the water. It can't be helped, he whispered. Forgive me, Mary.

He rolled the whole thing off the bridge. It made a huge, helpless splash. Ripples circled swiftly out, exciting sparks of moonlight. They quieted. They disappeared.

And the river ran darkly again.

He walked slowly back to the car. The thing was done. The car seemed empty. He felt empty, too. Mechanically, with a flashlight, he explored the trunk compartment. He found nothing.

The thing was done. He climbed into the car. The water flowed black as ink, and Mervyn said aloud, “Goodbye, Mary.”

He started the car, pulled off the bridge, swung around and drove back the way he had come, west, toward the black mountains, toward the glow of the cities circling the bay. Who or what was waiting for him, malignantly, over the hill?

It would be harder now, he thought. The evidence linking him to Mary was gone.… But something gnawed at the back of his mind. He could not identify it. What had he overlooked? The car trunk? He'd give that a good cleaning in the morning. Something else? He jerked his head in irritated failure.

Mervyn got home at two in the morning. He parked the convertible in the garage, went quietly by the back way into the court. All the apartments were dark. Mervyn looked up at Apartment 12 for a moment. Susie must be feeling so lonely.…

He had the wild impulse to wake her up, soothe her, let her soothe him. Impossible, of course. Harriet Brill, that human sonar, would hear him as he passed; and then, Susie was likely to be tart and sarcastic rather than soothed or soothing. He wondered how it would be to have Susie for a wife, and wondered at himself for wondering.

When he stole into his apartment and flicked on the light, he searched the rooms. He was only half convinced that nothing was wrong.

He stood uncertainly in his living room, swaying with fatigue. But he knew he could not sleep. So he went into the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet. John Boce had lifted the fifth of bourbon, but there was still some Scotch, and he made himself a Scotch and soda, took it back into the living room and slumped down on the couch.

He sipped, brooding.

Something was missing. Something he had neglected.

He reviewed the entire affair, from Friday night to the present moment. Mary Hazelwood in a rumpled blue suit, stiff, contorted, life gone. He saw again the area of the blow, the odd semicircular contusion. And suddenly, heart pounding, he jumped up and ran into his bedroom and yanked his wardrobe open and snatched from its top shelf his ski boots. He took one of the boots by the toe and dashed over to his bed and swung the boot viciously. The heel struck the white spread with great force, leaving a crescent-shaped indentation in the spread.… He thought he would faint. But he nerved himself and examined the heel of the boot closely. He could find nothing, and he tossed it aside and peered at the heel of the other boot, the left one. Was that a dark stain on the cogs? Yes! And a wisp of blond hair caught in a roughened cut mark. A blond hair … like Mary's.

Mervyn ran back through the living room to his kitchen, carrying both ski boots. His head was a jumble of thoughts: That stain … blood … must be blood … hair … Mary's … maybe others they'll find under a microscope … they can test for blood … establish blood type … test for hair … identify …

At the kitchen sink, he washed and washed and washed the heel of the left boot. He used scouring powder, he scrubbed, he polished, he rinsed. Then he rubbed with vinegar. Then he rubbed with salt. Then he rubbed with more scouring powder. Then he dipped the heel in ammonia, rinsed again. But those police-laboratory tests were fantastically sensitive, he told himself. He turned on one of the burners of his range; he held the heel over the clean blue flame and scorched it over and over. And then, once more, he scoured the heel and rinsed it; and finally he dried it.

And then, for good measure, went through the entire process again with the right ski boot. Just in case, he told himself.

He was gasping when he returned to the living room, as if he had run five miles. His eyes felt as if they were full of hot sand.

Sleep was out of the question.

He dropped like a sack of feed on the couch.

So he had caught and balked another trap laid by his enemy. Were there others? There must be others.…

And suddenly his neck prickled, at the nape.

He was being watched! He
knew
it.… There! Wasn't that a slight sound?

Mervyn slewed about on the couch, glaring at his front door, biting his lower lip, flexing his fingers, scarcely breathing. You damn patsy, he said to himself, get up and go over to that door and open it and find out once for all.… Suddenly he was in a rage. He jumped off the couch, dashed to the door, jerked it open.…

No one.

He peered out, right, left.

No one.

He actually stepped out into the court and took a deliberate look around. Nothing stirred. The fountain tumbled in the slanting moonlight.

Mervyn stood stock still, listening. All he heard was the fountain and his own râling breath.

So he went back into his apartment and locked his door and snapped off the living-room light and went into his bedroom and undressed quickly in the dark and crept into his bed and pulled the sheet over his head, like a child.