Rather Cool for Mayhem, page 14
While listening to the clink of glasses and the boiler-factory clatter that told of an ice-tray being chiseled loose from the electric refrigerator in the kitchenette, I took stock of the Westerford apartment. It was not fundamentally different from any other Village roachery, with fifty years of grimy walls buried beneath successive biennial layers of cheap paint. Yet it bore the unmistakable imprint of the Westerfords’ own way of life, symbolized by the stockings hanging from the lamp shade. At the base of the lamp, an open book lay face downward on the floor. Two empty glasses and an overflowing ashtray stood on the radio. A somewhat rumpled pink elastic girdle had been flung into a corner of the divan and a cerise necktie dangled from the knob of a half-open door which led into the bedroom.
I could not see into the dark bedroom, but I could well imagine what a light would reveal: spilled powder, bobby pins, and a hairbrush fuzzy with combings on the dresser; an unmade bed; another unemptied ashtray on the night table; pants or a sweater on the back of a chair, and shoes lying in odd corners.
One wall of the living room was devoted to built-in bookshelves. From where I sat I could not read the titles of the volumes on the half-filled shelves, but I recognized most of the pictures on the other walls. They were all reproductions—an authentically anaemic and noseless Marie Laurencin, a charmingly hideous Rouault, a Marc Chagall with levitating violinists, and a geometrical abstraction in a dozen shades of purple by some artist whose work I had never seen but did not much regret. On the floor near the radio stood an object resembling a truncated elm set into a concrete base which I took at first to be a piece of nonobjective sculpture, perhaps by Brancusi. On closer study, however, I realized that the bit of tree trunk was merely a device on which Othello was supposed to sharpen his claws when there was no leg of a visitor handy.
I decided abruptly that I had seen enough of the Westerford apartment. Even the luscious Conchita was not going to detain me longer; she was not at her best on her home grounds. The shut-in atmosphere, the background of disorder, did not set off her aura of sultry mystery as vividly as had the autumn foliage at Blindman’s Lake. I stood up, and had started toward the door when Conchita came out of the kitchenette with a glass in each hand.
“Sorry I was so long,” she apologized. “I had trouble with the ice cubes.”
She handed me a glass and hooked her free arm in mine to draw me toward the divan. Othello sprang out from under just in time to avoid being crushed to death, yowled briefly in protest, and stalked sulkily into the bedroom.
“I know it’s not polite to drink and run,” I said, “but that’s what I’m going to have to do.”
“You’re not,” Conchita said. “You can’t. I can’t let you go to jail—yet.” She touched her glass to mine. “Here’s how. Here’s to you and me.”
“Here’s to crime,” I said.
I emptied half the glass without tasting it, but the aftertaste was strange and unfamiliar. I wondered vaguely what she could have put in to make even cheap whisky taste like a dentist’s fingers. However, I had long since discovered that the feminine touch in mixing drinks is just one of those things to be charged off to intuition and never to be questioned. Anyhow, I was drinking for therapeutic reasons, not for pleasure. I drank half the remainder.
“What crime, Jim?” Conchita asked, putting her cheek against mine.
“Oh, any crime, as long as it’s not a capital crime. I’m still a little squeamish about murder.” I drained my glass. “Well, I’d better run.”
“You!” Conchita said. “You’re not going to give yourself up, are you, Jim?”
“Why not? I didn’t kill anybody.”
“It seems so much simpler just to wait until they find you. And anyhow, I don’t want to lose you—not yet.”
She leaned over to kiss me. I kissed her back, but I’m afraid it was pretty perfunctory. Her lips had lost their fascinating savor. I patted her cheek.
“I thought we were going to listen to Eddie’s program,” I said.
“Of course. I almost forgot. But it’s not surprising, is it?” She got up to turn on the radio.
The tubes warmed up in the middle of a newscast. The announcer was panting over something the Russians did or were going to do in the United Nations Security Council, an imminent divorce in Hollywood, and a train wreck on Long Island. He was completely breathless by the time he reached the item that gave me an acute attack of horripilation.
“And here’s the latest on the murders at Blindman’s Lake,” the newscaster was shouting. “A six-state alarm has gone out for the arrest of Lieutenant James Lawrence, former U.S. Army officer attached to SHAEF headquarters in London. Lieutenant Lawrence is wanted by New York State Police in connection with the murder of Dr. Norman H. Norman, New York physician and pathologist, found shot to death last night in a summer cabin at Blindman’s Lake, a resort community in the Ramapo Hills of Southern New York state.”
The newscaster paused for breath, so I breathed, too.
“Lawrence disappeared shortly before the discovery of the second murder in twenty-four hours,” the racing voice resumed. “The second victim was Alma Frazer, a waitress at the Lakeside Inn, where the murdered Dr. Norman had been staying before his death. Police believe Alma Frazer was strangled because she was a witness to the Norman murder. According to Captain McKay of the State Police, a note was found near the waitress’ body, in her own handwriting, addressed to Lieutenant Lawrence, asking him to meet her in her room at the inn, probably in the hope of blackmailing him. Lawrence is believed heading for the Canadian border.… And now the weather forecast. For New York City and vicinity and Northern New Jersey-—”
“Jim,” Conchita interrupted, “you didn’t tell me about Alma.”
“Didn’t I? I thought you knew. You know so many things.”
“Why did you do it, Jim?”
I looked carefully into Conchita’s eyes. She sounded so sincere that for a moment I thought she was naively asking for information. Her eyes were neither smoky nor flinty. They were merely anxious.
“I didn’t like the way she fixed her hair,” I said. “I asked her to get a feather bob, and she refused. So what else was there to do?”
“Anyhow, you can’t leave here now, Jim. There’s a six-state alarm.”
“I’m safe. They think I’m halfway to Canada. Give me a quickie for the road, and I’ll start right out for Mexico.”
“You!” Conchita said. “Of course I’ll get you a drink, but you can’t leave—yet.”
As she went into the kitchenette, the radio program reached a station-break. The announcer went into an orgiastic description of the next show, something called “Ten Thousand to One,” with the Twitchell Twins, Billy Bouncer’s Band, and ten thousand bucks to anybody who knew the right answers.
“Hey, Conchita,” I called. “I thought Eddie’s show was next.”
Conchita emerged instantly with a fresh drink. She had conquered the ice problem, apparently.
“Sure, Eddie’s on next,” she said. “He follows the news.”
I took the drink. “This is Ten Thousand to One,” I said. “Is that Eddie’s show?”
“Good grief!” Conchita glanced at her wrist. “My watch stopped. We missed the show.”
“Tough. But I’ll try to bear up.” I took a big bite out of the drink. The phone rang.
Conchita answered and her face changed. Either she was a first-rate actress or the phone call was upsetting. I listened to the one-sided conversation.
“Yes, just a little while ago.… No, not yet … No, nobody.… Well, it’s not very convenient. I just got out of the bathtub … Can’t you make it later?” A long pause. Then, “Okay, suit yourself.… I think you’re crazy, but if you—Okay. See you.”
Conchita dropped the phone and came at me with arms flailing.
“Jim, get into the bathroom. Quick. Take your drink with you.”
“Now wait,” I said. “I never drink while—”
“Quick, Jim. We’re having company. A neighbor. He’s a police detective and he lives in the apartment just downstairs. He must have seen us come in together and he suspects something. He’s coming right up.”
“Don’t let him in,” I said.
“But he’s a cop, Jim. I can’t keep him out. He’ll get a warrant or break down the door or something. Quick.”
Chapter Sixteen
All the while she was talking, Conchita was gently pushing me backward toward the bathroom. I backed quietly, not because I thought it was a good idea but because my will to resist was being engulfed in a wave of physical weakness. Two waves, in fact—one starting at my toes, which had reached my knees, and the other moving down from my eyes into my throat. By the time I had been nudged into the bathroom and the door closed upon me, the two waves had met under my midriff, churning up a maelstrom of nausea.
I pushed aside some dirty towels and sat down limply on the rim of the bathtub. The room was revolving slowly on its axis. I had never felt this way since my last Atlantic crossing, and I wondered if I was becoming subject to nervous indigestion at my age. I swallowed hard for a minute, staring at a little box of shredded newspaper under the washstand—no doubt Othello’s personal privy. Then I caught a whiff of the drink I was still holding, gagged, and finally quit being a damned fool.
I dumped the remaining contents of the glass down the drain, sank to my knees in front of the porcelain throne, raised the seat, opened my mouth, and touched my uvula with my right index finger. I remember wondering vaguely whether Conchita’s policeman friend had arrived yet, and thinking that if he had, she would have a tough time denying there was anyone else in the apartment. For the next thirty seconds I gave a first-rate imitation of a trained seal barking for more fish. Then I arose from my position of ignominy and restored myself to normalcy with a little cold water. I was pleased to find that the bathroom had stopped revolving.
While I was drying my face with a handkerchief in preference to the Westerford towels, I heard Conchita’s voice in the next room. I approached the bathroom door and listened. As I could hear no second voice, I concluded she was talking into the telephone. She must have been speaking in dulcet undertones, with her mouth close to the transmitter, for I could not distinguish words. The throaty contralto, however, was unmistakably hers.
I tried to open the door a crack, to hear better. I turned the knob right and pulled, then left, and pulled. Then I turned it right and left and pushed. The door was locked—from the outside.
At that moment Conchita Westerford rose tremendously in my estimation. She had all my respect and admiration. She was a very real person. She was fundamentally a very good person—though I could have wrung her neck. I remembered of a sudden what Grace had said to me in the woods that morning when I had commented facetiously on the relationship between Conchita and Eddie Westerford. Grace had said: “Did it ever occur to you that she might love him?” Grace was right. Conchita did love Eddie. She loved him more than anything else in the world.
I don’t say that all of Conchita’s concupiscent pyrotechnics were entirely sham, as far as I was concerned. At least I liked to think that she had really envisaged going to bed with me with a certain degree of personal pleasure, and that she would have followed through with enthusiasm, gusto, and no reservations or regrets. But I did know at that moment that the whole idea was not centered on me or anything concerned with my physical or psychical personality. This was all for Eddie, not for me. For Eddie and Conchita, because Conchita loved Eddie.
I am not competent to analyze the abstract concept of love—of sacred or profane love, of Freudian or Adlerian love, of sexual or ethereal love, of love on the fly or love through the ages. Some analyst with a profitable command of all the twenty-five-dollar words in the professional jargon could explain how it is possible for a woman to love one man and to go to bed—or want to go to bed—with another. I’m sure they would come up with talk of glandular inequalities, of physical or psychical frustration, of projections and compensations, of mother-love transformed and transferred and transfixed. I wouldn’t know anything about that. But I did know that Conchita’s love for Eddie—whether it was maternal or protective or spiritual or whatever—was very strong and very fine, and I couldn’t help admiring it, even though it was extremely inconvenient for me.
Eddie was in a jam. Eddie seemed to be menaced by the activities of Jim Lawrence. Conchita loved Eddie. Therefore Conchita had to remove the menace the best she could, whether it be by the tempting bait of her own charms, by an amateur Mickey Finn, or by locking Lawrence in the toilet. It was all for Eddie. So Jim Lawrence, at long last, realized that he was very much on his own.
I threw up the bathroom window and looked out. There was a fire-escape platform a little to the left on the same floor level! The window was three sizes too small for me, but I couldn’t be choosy. I found my shoulders would go through on the bias. I dropped the seat, stepped on it, and swung my legs over the window sill. My hips were a tight fit, but there was not time for an eight-day diet now. I squirmed through, hung on to the sill, caught a heel in the fire-escape and executed a bit of acrobatics that I would never have dared had I given it a second thought. I was a little surprised to find myself clinging to the rusty railing of the fire-escape platform.
There was a drawbridge sort of iron stairway that swung down from the platform to the ground when a weight was placed on it sufficient to overcome the counterpoise. I found the ladder and stood on it. It did not budge. I gave a timid, tentative jump. The rusty mechanism cried and whined a little and dropped ten inches. I jumped again. The ladder swung down a few feet and stuck fast. No amount of jumping could budge it further. I backed down on all fours like a monkey, caught the last rung, and swung myself to the ground. It was only a short drop, and I broke nothing more serious than the back seam of my trousers, which parted audibly.
I picked myself up, brushed off my knees, and determined that I was in an alleyway surrounded by the trash cans of the Italian restaurant next to the building in which the Westerfords lived. The trash cans were a heartening discovery. Where there are trash cans there is access to the street. I moved cautiously down the alleyway until I reached the property line. I peered out. I saw nobody in front of the Westerford apartment building, although Conchita’s car was still parked there. I emerged on the sidewalk before I looked in the opposite direction. I saw two uniformed policemen standing at the corner, looking toward me. I walked into the Italian restaurant with all the nonchalance I could muster, and climbed aboard a stool at the bar. I pivoted so that I could watch the door.
“Grappa?” the bartender asked. He was baldheaded and his smile gleamed with gold bridge work, just like Karl Vogel at Blindman’s Lake, but he was smaller than Karl. Or maybe the resemblance was purely coincidental. I hoped he could marry his Alma Frazer before it was too late. I may even have given voice to my thoughts because the barman said, “How’s that, please?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“I thought you said you wanted a Mamie Taylor,” the barman said, looking at me curiously.
“Rye. Just some rye and water.”
I didn’t want the rye. My stomach shuddered at the idea. Still I wanted something to do until I knew more about the intentions of the two cops at the corner. I lifted the glass and was pleased to find it had a sweet, refreshing smell after Conchita’s ersatz mickeys. I took a sip and found it warming.
The two cops sauntered by and paused in the doorway. One of them wagged his head at the barman, who acknowledged the greeting with a wave of his bar towel. The other cop made a slow, bored, maddeningly-thorough survey of the scene. I thought his eyes lingered on me for several seconds longer than on anyone else. I drank the rest of the rye. The two cops moved on.
I waited a decent interval, paid my check, and slid off the stool.
“Where are you going?” the bartender asked.
“Places,” I said, “in a hurry. I’m late for night school.”
“Are you going home?”
“Oh, ultimately. My mother waits up for me and she always worries if I’m not in by sun-up.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t go home without wiping that lipstick off your left ear.”
The bartender grinned. I grinned back and went out. I hesitated on the sidewalk, looking in all directions. Conchita’s red car was still at the curb, but I didn’t see Conchita. I didn’t see the two cops, either.
I started walking very casually in the direction of Grossbeck’s Pharmacy. When I reached the first corner I shifted into a canter.
Chapter Seventeen
It was quite dark when I got back to Grossbeck’s Pharmacy. The blue and orange globes in the window were lighted up, conveying their message of confidence and yesterday’s scientific mysticism much more eloquently than the neon sign which was not there. I tried the door. It was locked. I pressed my nose against the plate glass. I could see one lonely fly-specked light burning inside the pharmacy—probably over the safe. I saw nobody moving around.
I strolled down the street, looking for an alleyway that led to the back court. There had to be an alleyway, because I had seen trash cans in the court when I unlocked the window near the phone booth. There was.
I made my way down the dark, narrow passage, until I reached the areaway. Orienting myself by the shadow of the ailanthus tree, I quickly found my window. It was still unlatched. When I raised it, the sash pulleys screamed in protest. I crouched against the wall, sure that a dozen other windows opening on the areaway would echo the screech, that lights would go on, heads pop out, voices challenge. Nothing of the sort took place. New Yorkers are callously indifferent to the domestic noises of their neighbors, to sounds either of joy or of distress. I straddled the window sill and plunged into the pharmacy without bothering to close the window behind me.
