Recipe for Homicide, page 12
Then came sudden freedom as the family dispersed. First Papa Wall and his DT’s were carted off to die at public expense. Then Barbara’s fifteen-year-old younger sister got married and her older sister ran off with a carnival. Three brothers vanished within a few weeks—one into the Navy, one into Reform School (via Juvenile Court) and the third into parts unknown. Two months later her mother married a widowed garage mechanic, and took the two youngest with her.
So Barbara took off her apron and went to college—not to Sweet Willow, but to a land-grant college in a Midwestern state, where she could work her own way. She worked hard, not only for her board and keep and at her studies, but to make herself into the kind of person she had decided she wanted to be. At first she knew only what she did not want to be, but it was to be the basis for her whole new creed—a sort of Greek legend in which she was to play both Pygmalion and Galatea. First of all, she was determined that come what may, she would never, never be poor again. She was just as determined that whatever happened, she would never again cook for anyone, not even herself. And she was even more determined that she would never be dependent upon anyone but herself, especially not a man. Men, she had learned by family experience, were unreliable. Furthermore, she had made up her mind that she would achieve a social position which would give her immunity from being patronized by her equals. She had been hurt by the caste system at State, where she was considered socially inferior because she waited table to earn her way. So she had studiously prepared herself for what seemed to be an impregnable position—economically, socially, physically, culturally.
“It’s taken a lot of work,” Barbara said, “a lot of acting, and quite a bit of lying. But I don’t regret it. I’ve got where I want, and I’ll do anything to stay where I am. Anything.”
Gilmore watched Barbara nervously drain the last of her second brandv.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Anything.” Barbara helped herself to a third brandy. “You ought to be sure of that since this afternoon.”
“Because you kept your mouth shut, you mean, and let me take the rap for the story in the Journal?”
Barbara nodded. She drained her glass again. “It would have been so simple for me to point out that you had nothing to do with the break in Barzac shares; that it was the photos of Peggy—my photos—that touched off the explosion.”
“What good would that have done?” Gilmore reached for the bottle himself.
“It might have meant your job. It still might. But that’s not the half of it. Have you any idea why I wanted you to come here tonight, Gil? Why I’ve been letting down my back hair?”
Gilmore was surprised to see tears welling up into Barbara’s eyes. “Why, no,” he said, “unless, to coin a phrase, you’re about to turn over a new leaf.”
Barbara shook her head. One tear escaped to run down her cheek. She clasped the fingers of both hands about her brandy glass. “It’s too late for that, Gil,” she said. “I’ve done too damned good a job on myself. I thought that when I’d got to the point I wanted, I could have my cake and eat it, too. But I can’t, Gil. This afternoon I discovered I was suffering from acute schizophrenia. So, before I slip back into my monolithic, monomaniac life, I—”
“Those are big words, Barbie.”
“I know. I looked them up before you came, Gil. I wanted to be able to explain exactly how things were, because this will probably be the last time—”
“Barbie, are you blackmailing Evans?” Gilmore interrupted abruptly.
Barbara twisted the stem off her brandy glass. A sharp, gleaming sliver gashed her palm. Ignoring the cut, she turned both palms down on the tablecloth.
“What makes you say that, Gil?”
“Something I heard this afternoon.”
“About me?”
“No. About Evans. I think he’s vulnerable. Do you know where the body is buried?”
“Why pick on me, Gil?”
“You seem to be the old man’s darling—or at least the darling of the new administration. He—or they—have been pushing you ahead at an amazing rate. That reminds me, you’d better ask for a raise tomorrow. You really should be earning more money than your subordinates.”
Barbara got up without a word and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she was inspecting an adhesive bandage she had applied to her gashed hand. All traces of tears had vanished. Her composure had been re-established.
“We were talking about Evans,” she said calmly. “What am I supposed to be blackmailing him about?”
“Do you know Chris Froley?”
Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “Is that the husband of the sexy little minx from the carrot line, the one who’s been on the make for you, or vice versa?”
“Chris Froley is shop steward on the third floor, Main Building.”
“We’re talking about the same man. What about him?”
“Evans seems to have learned two weeks ago that Froley was a Commie. He says he wrote the F.B.I. about it. The F.B.I. has no record of Evans’s letter, but it does have a record that Froley was a card-carrying Party member up to a year ago. I don’t like the smell of the thing—Evans sitting around, waiting for the F.B.I. to answer a letter which was never received, while Froley goes on merrily working for Barzac.”
“So what? Gene Evans puts on a great act, too, Gil. He plays the tough old reactionary, but he’s really a softy at heart. He’d lean over backward to protect a liberal.”
“I’m not talking about liberals, Barbie. I’m talking about a guy who’s politically at war with his own country, who’s been working in a plant with a war contract, turning out stuff for a war the guy has been instructed to disapprove and discourage. He works on the same floor where Army rations are being canned. The boss knows it, but nothing happens until a damned fine girl gets poisoned by those rations. Why?”
Barbara got herself another glass and toyed with the bottle. “Why do you think I have the answer to that question?” she asked.
“You have a talent for digging up wicked bits of information. I keep remembering what you did to me in New York. Who told you I married Zina out of gratitude for her having helped save me from being cashiered from the Army because I lost my uniform during a barroom brawl in the Kasbah in Algiers?”
“I’m not sure who told me. But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“The facts are true, although you’re wrong about my motive for marriage. But when you repeated the story to the rich Chicagoan looking for a manager for the Northbank branch of his advertising agency, you didn’t point out that the barroom brawl consisted of my being jumped by a dozen Arab thugs in the dark, and that I was cold sober at the time. It probably wouldn’t have done any good anyhow, since the rich Chicagoan is one of the hundred thousand who voted the Prohibition ticket in the last presidential election, is chairman of three anti-saloon societies and contributes half a million dollars a vear to a dozen others. But you know, of course, that your telling that very funny story to the man from Chicago cost me a twenty-thousand-a-year job?”
Barbara nodded. “You told me that when you fired me,” she said. “It was a dirty trick and I deserved to be fired for it.” She came around the table and put her hands on Gilmore’s shoulders. “Do you know why I did it, Gil?”
“Ruthless ambition. You thought if you knifed me, you might charm yourself into the job.”
“No, Gil. At first I told myself I was being jealous and vindictive because you married Zina suddenly just when I was beginning to think I was falling in love with you myself. Maybe it was partly that. But the real reason was that I just didn’t want you to go to Northbank. I didn’t want you to leave New York. I didn’t want you to go away from me.”
Gilmore blinked incredulously. He stood up, reached for Barbara’s hands on his shoulders.
“I didn’t know then how important it was for you to get to Northbank,” Barbara continued. “You never told me about your mother. How long has she been blind, Gil?”
“Since right after my old man died. A little after I got out of the Army.”
“Gil, I’m tight, or I wouldn’t be telling you all this. It doesn’t pay to be frank about these things. For instance, a smart girl would never tell a guy she’s been crazy about him for years. But I can tell you, Gil, because it doesn’t matter any more now. When you went to Barzac, Gil, I worked like mad to wangle a publicity job with some other soup company. And then after I landed with Gold Label, I played all the angles to come along on this Barzac deal so I could be near you, in Northbank. You see, Gil—I thought I was still in love with you.”
“And you’re not?”
“Obviously not.”
Gilmore’s hands slipped down from Barbara’s shoulders. He clasped her close, until he could feel the beat of her heart against him. He kissed her.
“Say that again,” he said, when he had caught his breath. “Say it now. I dare you.”
“Obviously not,” Barbara repeated, looking him squarely in the eyes. With her forefinger she removed some of the lipstick from his mouth. “I let you down this afternoon, Gil. If I loved you, I wouldn’t have let you take the rap for the Journal story. So obviously I’m much more interested in my job, than in you—or yours. Do you know how my mind worked this afternoon, Gil?”
“Sure,” Gilmore said. “I was watching you. You were saying to yourself, ‘What a sap I am! Here I’ve been sweating like mad to get this bird’s job away from him, just so I could be magnanimous about it when it came to a showdown, and I could give it back to him. And then I found I didn’t want to give it back. I wanted it for myself. And furthermore, I didn’t want to get tied up with a guy who was on his way out. Barbara Wall casts her electoral vote for Barbara Wall.’”
“You’re so right, Gil.”
“But one thing you didn’t take into consideration. You didn’t know you were going to be honest with yourself—and me. And that it would make all the difference in the world.”
“I’m being honest with myself, because I don’t want to leave any loose ends when you go out of here tonight. I want it to be a clean break—but clean. That’s why I’m going to be honest with you, too. I haven’t been yet, you know.”
“You’ve been more honest than I’ve been tonight, Barbie. I haven’t yet told you that I still love you.”
“Don’t, Gil. Don’t make it any harder. You were right when you said I’d been—not blackmailing anybody, Gil. Let’s call it horse-trading. But I’d been cutting corners and doing a little—well, you’d call it ‘in-fighting’—to get what I wanted. Only it wasn’t Mr. Evans.”
“It was Bart Remington?”
“Bart wants to marry me, Gil. I don’t mean he just says that, because I know it’s probably a worn-out record with him—with a broken-down groove that repeats the same phrase over and over again. But—I can tell, Gil. I can have him when I want him.”
“He’s got money,” Gilmore said. “And position. And influence. And a future. He’s your kind of guy, Barbie. You must have decided that this afternoon, when you voted against Gilmore, who was on the way out. Congratulations, Barbie.”
Gilmore drew back a few inches, waiting for the slap that never came. Instead, Barbara buried her face against his shoulder and burst into tears.
For a few seconds, Gilmore was surprised by the tears. For a few more seconds he was embarrassed. Then he slipped his fingers under Barbara’s chin, lifted her face and kissed her. He kissed her as he had not kissed anyone in years. He kissed her tear-damp eyes. He kissed her lips until they bled and he was breathless. He kissed the hollow of her throat until she was limp in his arms. He buried his face in the fragrance of her hair, tingling to the throbbing warmth of her body.
Then, somewhere far off, somewhere across Northbank, he heard a clock striking ten.
Gilmore tensed. He lifted his hand, listening to the last stroke of the distant chimes.
“What’s the matter, Gil?”
“I’ve got to leave you, Barbie.”
“Yes, of course you do.” Barbara was completely calm. “We’re being silly, aren’t we, Gil?”
“I’m being silly. I don’t want to leave you now, after I’ve just found you again.”
“Then stay, Gil.”
“I must go.”
“Where, Gil? Is it about Peggy’s—death?”
Gilmore nodded.
“Then don’t go. I know you were fond of Peggy, but this doesn’t really concern you, Gil.”
“It concerns me very much,” Gilmore said, “and it may very well concern you, too. I forgot to tell you that somebody tried to kill me this morning. I don’t know who or why. But if, as I suspect, there is any connection with my quondam custody of Émile, I should think you’d share the curiosity that I’m going to try to satisfy tonight.”
“Why not leave all that to the police, Gil?”
“I’m afraid my special source of information would clam up instantly in the presence of the law.”
Barbara’s sherry-colored eyes turned from fino to oloroso. “You’re meeting Fancy-pants Froley?”
Gilmore did not reply.
“Don’t go, Gil. Please. Let Dr. Coffee and Ritter or whatever his name is take care of everything.”
“Look, Barbie.” Gilmore spoke hesitantly. “The F.B.I. will probably be breathing on the back of my neck in a matter of hours. Because from where I sit, the poisoned rations and Peggy’s death are all mixed up with Émile and Zina—and therefore me. If I were an F.B.I. agent looking for Émile, I don’t think I’d believe the story that Zina’s ex-husband lent the book to a girl named Barbara, and that somebody broke into Barbara’s apartment to steal it. I think I can locate that book. I’d like to get it back.”
Barbara looked at him silently, with great longing, as though she might never see him again. Then she kissed him, slowly, deliberately. “Come back, Gil,” she said at last. “Tonight.”
“You’re going to marry Bart Remington. Remember?”
“Not tonight, Gil. Tonight I’m being honest—but only with myself. And with you. We have unfinished business, Gil.” She pushed herself out of Gilmore’s arms. “Good luck, Gil,” she said. “I’ll wait up.”
XVI
Gilmore approached the Anchor Bar in a state of strange excitement. Dinner with Barbara had left him both dismayed and elated, and he was not sure which emotion was false. Rationally, he knew he should dismally regret having admitted that his love for Barbara was a hardy perennial, only to find that her ego would never let it bloom. He knew, too, that he should be unhappy about Bart Remington. Yet he could not get rid of the feeling of triumph generated by her own admissions, and by her invitation to return.
He was making little progress in dispelling his confusion, possibly because of the last brandy, probably because of his imminent rendezvous with Frances Froley. At any rate, his meeting with Frankie promised a much simpler form of excitement. Frankie was certainly not the complicated personality that Barbara was. He knew exactly what he wanted from Frankie: the whereabouts of George Bayliss. And he thought he knew what she wanted from him in return. He was pretty sure he could bring off a successful exchange, even if he wasn’t going to like it much.
As he left his parked car and walked toward the sickly-blue neon anchor flashing on and off through the warm river mists, he seemed to see an anchor fast on the bottom, its flukes deep in ooze, its shank leaning wearily against the murky current, surrounded by silent, crawling things. Below the winking sign, the dim windows of the Anchor Bar glared dully at the waterfront, impervious to the rubies and emeralds of the night river traffic, even to the diamond clusters gleaming from the mastheads of vessels towing. The hoot of tugs that provided a raucous obligato to the clink of glasses was no more raucous than the hoots of bargemen, stevedores and river roustabouts who squinted across their lifeless beers at the wrestlers flickering on the Anchor’s television screen.
Gilmore had scarcely passed the swinging doors of the Anchor when he was seized with still another feeling—the feeling that he was walking into a trap. A sudden silence settled over the place as he walked in. Conversation stopped in midsentence as men turned to stare at the newcomer who was not only a stranger to the bar, but a stranger to the milieu, a man not of their breed. Men stood with glasses poised, not drinking, not looking at Gilmore but very much aware of his presence. Only the one-eyed bartender looked at him, but he, too, seemed to be waiting, waiting.…
Gilmore didn’t like the smell of the place—the rich, warm blend of animal odors and the stale scent of dead tobacco smoke and spilled beer. The effluvia of men who work with their hands, the strong male smell of August sweat and work clothes, was an honest reek, but it was tainted by the malignant breath of some vague evil.
A single overhead ceiling fan spun feebly without stirring up the slightest eddy in the hot, rank, blue air. Peering through the acrid haze, Gilmore spotted Frankie Froley in a booth far in the rear of the barroom. She was alone. Gilmore walked quickly toward her, and life at the bar began again with a little flurry of sound, of interrupted sentences resumed, of the clink of glasses.
“Gil, angeli I thought you weren’t coming.”
Gilmore muttered a few words of excuse, ignored the invitation of the half-pouting lips, and sat down opposite Frankie. She was dressed, or overdressed, like something out of early Eugene O’Neill. Her dress was a confection of candy-pink taffeta, with darker pink patches under her arms, and too many bows and rhinestone clips. She wore patent-leather slippers, huge gypsy earrings, and enough make-up for an hour’s television show. But her elemental appeal somehow survived all the trappings.
“Terrific. Makes you look more beautiful than ever,” Gilmore said. Frankie giggled. “You’re tight as a tick, Frankie.”
“You kept me waiting, honey. I couldn’t just sit here without drinking anything. I had a few short beers, is all.”
“You picked an elegant dive to wait in. Wliy’d you pick a joint like this?”
“Chris never comes here,” Frankie said.
