The Neon Jungle (19 page)

Vern sat on the edge of his bed at ten o’clock on Friday night and once again went over all the steps that had been taken, and all the ones that would have to be taken. The timing was the most delicate problem. If it were timed right, it would go off right.

On Thursday night he had emptied the fruit jars into a small cardboard carton. While in the cellar he had put the hypo box into one of the holes where a fruit jar had been and he had tamped the dirt down firmly afterward. He had wrapped the cardboard carton in brown paper, tied it with stout string, taken it down to the railroad station, and put it in a coin locker. He wore a brown belt with a trick spring device to give it elasticity. He had shoved the locker key into the leather sleeve of the belt that concealed the spring. The device of the cardboard carton had a flexibility that pleased him. It could be taken along or mailed to a predetermined address.

Darmond’s surprise accusation had rattled him badly. He hoped he had carried it off properly. It had become immediately necessary to find out how Darmond got the information. That had not been too difficult. He had caught Jana on the stairs an hour ago while the television was turned high.

She had not wanted to talk to him. He put one hand hard across her mouth and with the other he hurt her in a way he had been told about but had never tried before. It was alarmingly effective. When he released her, her face was the color of dirty soap and she could have fallen had he not grabbed her. Her color came back slowly. The threat of a second application made her willing to discuss the matter. It turned out that Bonny had gone to Jana, that something had made Bonny suspicious, and Jana, of course, had talked. So obviously Bonny had gone at once to Darmond.

The palms of his hands had begun to perspire. He rubbed them on a fresh handkerchief. At least the interview with Darmond had provided one advantage. It had given him a legitimate excuse, which Darmond would verify, for packing his belongings. The old suitcase, and the new one were in the closet, side by side. He saw himself checking them in at one of those hotels he had seen in the movies. Cabanas ringing the pool. Women deep-tanned and drowsy on the bright poolside mats. It would be one of the places where gambling was legal. He would hit a dozen of the gilded spots and then after a couple of weeks present himself at the nearest office of the Internal Revenue people and, acting earnest and confused, say, “Look, I don’t want to get in any trouble, but I came out here looking for a job and I started gambling and I’ve made all this money and what do I do now?” They would take a large bit of it, but it would be worth it to give the cash a legitimate background, a reason for existence. Then, if a man was presentable and watched his step and had a little cash and dressed right, it wouldn’t be too hard to move in on one of those moneyed dolls out there, because the gambling towns were divorce mills, and inevitably there would be one who was not only stacked, but also loaded, and rebounding high enough to catch on the fly. Vernon Karl Lockter will be joined in holy wedlock to Mrs. Delightful Gelt. Then let the organization try any squeeze plays. If you had the backings, you could always buy off pressure. And that piece of paper would be no damn good anyway. And then no nonsense about trying to inherit her money. It was much simpler just to take it away from her.

He shelved the bright dream and went downstairs. The ten-thirty program was just ending and the others had gone to bed and Gus sat woodenly, watching the bright screen. As the closing commercial came on, Gus got up and walked over and turned the set off and stood watching the scene collapse to a hard bright spot and then fade into blackness.

“Can I talk to you a minute, Gus?”

The old man turned, apparently becoming aware for the first time of another person in the room. “Talk? Go on. Talk.”

“Not here, Gus.”

“Where?”

“Come on, Pop. Outside. Walk around the block.”

Gus stared at him and then shrugged and went with him. Vern walked beside him, and waited until they were a good hundred feet from the house.

“You’ve been swell to me, Gus. I appreciate it. I want to tell you something because… well, you’ve been swell to me, and I don’t like to have something going on without you knowing about it.”

Gus stopped with a street light slanting across his heavy face, emphasizing the brutal lines, erasing the kindliness.

“Talk plain, Vern.”

“I will. You know when you go out early in the morning and go to the farmers’ market?”

“Yes, yes. I know. Talk.”

“Well, when you leave, right after you leave, somebody sneaks into bed with your wife. Understand, I don’t know who it is.”

Gus did not move or speak. Vern thought perhaps the old guy hadn’t understood. He said, “Did you hear me?”

Gus made a low sound in his throat and turned back toward the house. Vern grabbed his wrist and said, “Wait a minute, Pop. Hold up a minute.”

Gus yanked his arm free with surprising strength. Vern trotted by him and turned “and blocked the way. saying. “Wait!”

He had to walk backward, avoiding repeated attempts to thrust him out of the way until at last the old man stopped. “Wait for what? She do that to me? With these hands I—”

“No Pop. Don’t you get it? You got to find out who the guy is.”

“I beat it out of her.”

“That’s no good. Understand, I don’t have any proof.”

“Then how you know?”

“I got up early Thursday. I was going down the stairs and I looked down the hall and I saw somebody coming out of her room. A man. He saw me and dodged back in. It was too dark to see who it was. What good will it do if she denies everything? You got to catch them, Gus. That’s the best way.”

“How?”

“You don’t say anything, see? Tomorrow morning you get up at four, like always. I’ll wake up the kid when I go back and tell him not to wait downstairs for you in the morning. To go ahead and take the truck and drive it to that all-night gas station and fill it up and bring it back and you’ll be waiting. Then you don’t go downstairs. What you do is go upstairs. Just to the landing. We’ll wait there and see if anybody comes. See? Then you got the proof.”

“My Jana. I cannot think she—Ah, my God, the trouble! All trouble. Everything. Henry. My Teena. Jana. Ah, my God!”

“Do it my way, Gus.”

After a long time the man nodded. “Your way, then.”

After they went back Vern stood nervously on the stairs near the second-floor landing, listening for sounds of violence. The house was still. When he was certain that the old man would do it his way, he knew that the most ticklish part of it was done.

He went quietly down and through the house and went into Rick’s room without knocking and turned on the light. Rick sat bolt upright, squinting, his mouth open with surprise.

“What’s the matter, Vern? What’s the matter?”

Vern sat on the foot of the bed and said in a low tone, “Relax, dearie. Nothing’s wrong.” He lit a cigarette and gave Rick a crooked smile. “Guilty conscience or something?”

“What do you want, waking me up?”

“You got an alarm clock?”

Rick pointed to it. “Sure.”

“Gus wants you to go along with him in the morning. Something about picking up a big meat order. Here, I’ll set it for four. He wants you to get up and go up and wake him up. Got that?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t knock and don’t turn on any lights. Just go on in there quiet like a mouse and shake him.”

“O.K.”

“I told him I’d give you the word.” Vern got up and went to the door and turned and said. “Don’t let it bother you if you hear the truck drive out, Rick. I heard him telling the kid to take it over and gas it up and bring it back to pick up you two.”

He turned off the light and closed the door behind him. He felt excited, tensed up, very alive. He went quietly out through the kitchen and the shed and into the store. He drifted by the shadowy racks and went behind the meat case and took hold of the hard greasy handle of the meat cleaver and wrested the blade out of the chopping block. He hefted it for a moment in his hand, and then unbuttoned the bottom button of his shirt and put the cleaver inside, its blade resting chill against his skin.

It was at that moment that he had a sudden doubt. In spite of all the careful planning, he realized he had made one very stupid and obvious mistake. There had been absolutely no need to have anything to do with Jana. It could have been worked in precisely the same way without even touching her. And that would have removed certain elements of risk. Suppose the old man didn’t kill her. She could chatter and the old man could chatter, and that goddamn Rowell could add the two stories together and come up with a bad answer. If he’d never touched her, she wouldn’t be able to do anything but deny having anything to do with Stussen. And with the old man finding Stussen in his bedroom, her story would look sick. He wondered why he had made such an obvious mistake. He stood silently until the doubt began to fade. The old man would be as insane as you could make anyone. And it was pretty damn certain that he wouldn’t leave anything alive in the room.

He went back and up the stairs and hid the cleaver in his room and woke up the kid and told him to take the truck over and gas it up and bring it back to pick up the old man in the morning. He gave the kid a five-dollar bill for the gas. When he got back in his room it was a quarter after twelve. He turned out the table lamp and sat on the bed in the darkness. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not when there was so little time left.

PAUL DARMOND lay in darkness, his fingers laced at the back of his neck. He turned and looked at the clock. The luminous hands made the right angle of three o’clock. He remembered the tall good look of her as she walked away from him. He did not believe in premonition, but he had slept several times, and had awakened each time with the nagging thought that he would never see her again. That forever in his mind would be that last look of her as she walked away.

The clock said ten after three.

He sat up in the darkness and threw the covers aside and sat on the edge of the bed. He yawned and dressed slowly in the darkness. He let himself out and stood in front of the building. It was three-thirty. He turned resolutely in the opposite direction from the market and the old shambling house. He walked a few blocks and then slowed and stopped and stood for a time, and turned back and walked slowly back and passed his apartment. It was childish, but he knew it would make him feel better to just walk by the place where she slept. He wished he knew which window was hers.

When he was two blocks from the house he quickened his step, and felt an odd prickling of apprehension at the nape of his neck.

But when he arrived at the house it stood huge and dark and silent. He stood in the soft warm night on the narrow sidewalk looking up at the third-floor windows. Like, he thought, a lovesick kid.

The second-floor light startled him when it went on. Then he realized it was probably Gus getting up to go down to the market.

The sound came loudly, shocking its way through him. It was like no sound he had ever heard before. It took him the space of three heartbeats to identify it for what it was: the hard full crazy-throated screaming of a woman, short shrill bursts of screaming as she sucked her breath in, let it burst out in a scream lasting no more than a second, and then did it again and again. He ran for the front door of the house as hard as he could run, and as he went up the steps in one bound, the last metronomic scream was abruptly cut off. He tore the door open and ran up the flight of stairs.

Filled with the restlessness of a sense of impending trouble, Lieutenant Rowell, after the last of the joints in his area had closed, cruised slowly down the empty streets, making random turns. The metallic voice suddenly filled the car. Rowell listened, and then made a U turn, bouncing the right front wheel off the far curb, and tromped the gas pedal down hard. He shrieked to a stop in front of the Varaki house and drew his short muzzled revolver as he went toward the front porch in a bandylegged run.

Rick woke up when the alarm went off. He was astonished to see that it was dark outside. It took him a few moments to remember why he had got up at this hour. He felt sodden and greasy with sleep. He turned on the light and dressed quickly. He felt abused. Saturday was always a hard day. Now people wanted you to get up before the birds did.

He went quietly through the house and tiptoed up the stairs to the second floor. He started down the hall and thought he heard a sound behind him, a sort of grunting and a stir of movement. He stopped and listened and heard no other sound. Darkness had always made him uncomfortable, had always given him the feeling of something all teeth that was about to jump out at him. He licked his lips. He stopped in front of Gus’s door and he wanted to knock at the door. Behind the door was a bed where a man and a woman slept together. He did not like to think about that. He wiped his hand on the side of his pants and gingerly turned the knob and opened the door. He wanted to cough or something. He tiptoed in and he could make out the bed. He could barely see the prone figure of the sleeper. As he tiptoed across the room he could hear breathing sounds. It didn’t sound just right for somebody sleeping because they seemed too fast. He stood by the bed, peering down, and wiped his hand on the side of his pants again and reached gingerly down to shake Gus by the shoulder. His hand brushed and touched an odd heavy roundness, and something caught at his sleeve. He heard a hard thumping like somebody running. Somebody running in the hall. And the harsh overhead light went on suddenly and there alone in the bed was Jana, and he turned quickly toward the door and saw a man running at him, mouth wide open and twisted in a funny way, a man with a face he didn’t know for a moment, and then he saw it was Gus running toward him. He felt his own lips stretch in the smile that had protected him from so many things, and he said, “I was just—” And he saw Vern in the doorway behind Gus and felt relief because Vern would explain. And he saw a flashing glint in the light and saw in a thunderous part of a second what Gus was doing to him even as the quick flashing slanted up toward his head, and the flashing turned into a great hard white hot burning light that slid him tumbling over in brightness like a bug in a lamp shade, tumbling, grinning, his ears saying back to him “just… just… just…” in the instant before a great hairy hand turned out all the lights in the world.