Heaven Ran Last

Chapter XII

The phone woke me the next morning. It was the blonde.

She said, “This is Marie. I’m downstairs. Can I come up and see you?”

“Sure thing. But give me a couple of minutes to get dressed, honey.”

“All right.” She hung up and I climbed out of bed and dressed in a hurry. I hadn’t liked the way her voice sounded. She didn’t sound hurt or mad, which was what I expected. She sounded cool and sure of herself.

She knocked while I was putting on my coat. I opened the door and she came in with a funny little smile on her face.

“I’m sorry, honey, about last night,” I said. I took her by the shoulders and tried to kiss her but she twisted away from me and sat down in the big chair.

I noticed then she wasn’t dressed for work. She had on a black silk dress with sheer stockings and high-heeled shoes. They made her look more sure of herself and older.

“I waited up pretty late last night,” she said.

“I told you I was sorry,” I said. “A deal came up that I just had to handle.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

“Fine. How about a drink?”

She said no, so I made one for myself. I realized I’d been hitting the stuff pretty hard during the last week and I decided to have one stiff one and lay off for the rest of the day.

“You’re not mad then?” I said.

“I was, but I’m not any more.” She was looking at me steadily, with the same funny little smile on her face. “I quit my job this morning,” she said.

She said it like it meant something.

“I knew you wouldn’t want your wife working as a waitress,” she said.

There was only one thing to say. “Of course I don’t,” I said.

“I quit because I figured we’d be getting married pretty soon,” she said.

“As soon as we can,” I said. I drank a little from my glass.

“How soon do you think that will be?” she said.

“That’s hard to say. I’m tied up right now in a couple of deals that mean big money. I’ve got to get those set before we can do anything.”

“I’d like to get married right away,” she said, and she smiled at me like she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “You know that’s all I ever really wanted. A place of my own, a husband, maybe some kids. I’m not a very smart girl. I didn’t even finish high school. I don’t read anything but the newspapers and all I read them for is the funnies and the society page. That’s funny, isn’t it? I mean about the society page. I like to look at those girls wearing nice clothes and walking around country clubs, but I wouldn’t want that. I wouldn’t know how to act in places like that. But I’ll know how to act in a place of my own. That’s what I want and I want it right away, Johnny.”

I was nervous and I didn’t know why.

“Well,” I said, “getting married right away is out. I just told you that.”

“I know you did, Johnny, but I’ve been thinking the last couple of days. I was’ thinking about how funny it was the way you started taking me around. Night after night to the best places in town, spending a lot of money and finally asking me to marry you and buying me a big expensive ring.”

“What’s funny about it?”

She went on as though she hadn’t heard me. “Then after we’d been going around for about a week you asked me to come up here and talk to a detective. He wanted to know where you were Sunday night. When I told him I was here with you at eight-thirty you looked pretty relieved.”

My glass was empty and I filled it again. I took my time about it so I could think. But I wasn’t thinking very well. I didn’t know what she was getting at, but it was bringing back the tight, wound-up feeling that had been building all during the past week.

I sat down and drank a little and tried to match her steady even look. She still had the funny little smile on her face.

“That’s why I thought we’d better get married right away,” she said.

“What are you trying to get at?” I said. “Do you think I started taking you around just so I could prove an alibi for Sunday night. Is that what you think?”

“No, I was thinking about something else, Johnny. Sunday night I guess I got pretty tight. When you left me I was asleep, but I woke up before you got back. It seemed like you’d been gone a long time so I called the operator and asked her what time it was. She said it was a quarter of nine.”

I heard the words all right but they didn’t come to me like words. They were like a piece of cold iron driving up through my stomach. I raised my glass and drank a little but I don’t know whether I tasted the whiskey. All I know was the tight ache inside me and the funny little smile on her face.

She said, “When you came back and we argued about the time I thought I might be wrong. I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face. You told me to, remember? Just as I was coming out the phone rang. You pulled me down beside you on the bed and asked the operator what time it was. When I got thinking about all this I thought that was funny. When you answer a phone you say hello, or something like that. If you want to know the time in a hotel you call the operator. She doesn’t call you. How would she know you wanted to know the time?

“Anyway she said it was eight-thirty. You held the phone over against my ear and asked her to say it again. And she did. But it wasn’t eight-thirty then. I know it wasn’t, because I’d called her before and she said it was a quarter of nine.”

“What’s the rest of it?” I said.

“That’s all. You didn’t get here until about nine o’clock. But you wanted me to say you were here at eight-thirty. And that’s what I said.” She looked at me evenly for a while and then she said in a low voice, “That’s why I think we ought to get married right away.”

I didn’t say anything. I finished my drink and made another. I was a little drunk already, and I wanted to get drunker. I wanted to do anything that would kill the fear that was making me shake all over. Then I put the glass down on a table and went back and sat down. I had to fix this but drinking wouldn’t do it.

“Why do you want to marry me at all?” I said. “You know I’m in trouble. And if you think the things you do about me you can’t love me very much. Why not run to the cops right now?”

“If I’m married to you they can’t make me talk against you can they? I read that somewhere. Isn’t that right, Johnny?”

That stopped me cold. I looked at her and saw that she meant it. The wise little smile was gone from her face. She looked scared now. Her mouth was open a little and her eyes were big and staring.

“I do love you, Johnny,” she whispered.

I went over to her and knelt beside the chair and took her in my arms. She buried her face in my chest.

“I had to tell you that or you wouldn’t let me help you, Johnny,” she said.

“I’m glad you did, honey,” I said.

While I held her she started to cry. I patted her shoulders and all the time my mind was racing.

Maybe she loved me. Maybe she was on the level about that but when I gave her the final brush she’d blow wide open and start talking. And Harrigan, for one, would listen to her with a lot of interest.

I had to shut her mouth. Marrying her would do it, but that would tear Alice wide open and if that happened everything would tear with her.

It was funny how quick I thought of murder. Once you get out of a mess by murdering, it must change the way you think. It’s so sure and final that it’s the first thing to come into your mind when you’re in trouble.

Lesser was my first. When he was there on the floor, groaning and rolling his head, I had a problem. But when I got the gun and put two shots in his head the problem was over, and Lesser wasn’t anything at all.

Now I knew it had to be the same way with the blonde. Only there wasn’t time for any plans. This would have to be cold and sure and quick.

“Don’t cry, honey,” I said. “You were right to tell me all that. Now just keep it quiet until we’re married. I’m in a jam but it’s nothing serious. Tonight we’ll take a nice long drive and everything will look a lot better.”

“When I’m with you everything seems all right,” she said. She looked up at me and smiled. “I feel it’s going to be right.”

“Sure it will, honey.”

After a little while she went into the bathroom to put on some make-up, then I kissed her and took her to the door.

When she was gone I looked at the drink I’d made and then I went into the bathroom with it and poured it down the toilet. I was shaky enough without knocking myself out with more liquor. I had to be sharp now.

I grabbed my hat and went down to get some food. It was almost two-thirty then and I sat in the restaurant, drinking tomato juice and thinking of how I was going to get rid of the blonde.

I had work to do that afternoon but there was too much on my mind now. When I’d think about the work my thoughts would twist around and pretty soon I’d be thinking about the blonde. That was the big thing now.

About three I went across the street to a little bar that made a practise of picking up race results on the radio every day. I had a beer and sat around talking to some guys I met there. The beer tasted good. Cold and sharp and it made me feel a lot better than the whiskey I’d been drinking.

The guy next to me was talking the seventh race at Hialeah. He’d been on the winner for a few bucks and now he was moaning because he hadn’t shot the whole roll.

I’d forgotten about Banghart’s bet. Now I remembered it and the thought made me cold. I took a long swallow from my beer...

“Who took the sixth?”

“Some dog, name of Adelaide.”

“What did she pay?”

“Nine to one. First race she won as a three-year-old. Can you beat that?” He went on talking about something else, but I wasn’t listening.

I pushed the bottle of beer away from me and told the bartender to give me a shot of whiskey.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “You look bad.”

I drank the shot and tried to keep my hands steady. I felt numb all over. The noises in the bar seemed to be coming from miles away.

Adelaide at nine to one.

I felt people were looking at me. I got up and walked out and went up to my room. All the way I was looking over my shoulder and even while I was doing it, I knew I was being silly.

I hated the look of the room. I hated the smell. I hated the gloomy shadows that settled down when the sun moved to the other side of the building. But there wasn’t any other place I could go.

I locked the door and pulled down the shades. I sat on the edge of the bed and I was dripping with sweat. Nine thousand bucks. A guy with a face like a steel trap would be asking me for nine thousand bucks pretty soon.

I snapped on a light and started walking around the room, pounding my hands together. After a while I calmed down enough to go through my accounts, trying to find some guys that owed me money. There were a few. A fin here, a sawbuck there, adding up to about forty bucks. Forty buck and I needed a mint full.

There was a chance of borrowing the dough. I called nine guys in a half hour, guys I knew pretty well. I couldn’t come out and ask for the money like I needed it bad, because that kind of news gets around town fast. I had to hint around but they guessed what I wanted and they did just what I’d have done. They came up with long hard luck stories.

About seven o’clock I took a shower and got dressed. I had to pick up the blonde at eight and I made myself think about her. I thought about what I had to do with her and that kind of thinking didn’t help the way I was feeling.

I was tight and nervous inside, but I’d been that way for so long now it seemed natural. I made myself one last big drink and sat down with it, trying to cool and relax.

I wished I could crawl into some cave where it was dark and quiet, a little cave that nobody else knew anything about, where I could hide forever.

The phone rang then and I got tighter inside. Sounds were hurting me now. They hit my ears like hot needles or pushed into my stomach like cold steel. They weren’t telephone bells and automobile horns and street noises any more. They were things that jabbed at me, hurt me, made me jump.

I picked up the phone. It was Banghart.

He said, “Well, Johnny, I guess I took you.” He laughed.

“You sure did,” I said.

His voice was quiet, soft and natural. “One of those things, I guess,” he said. “That was just a hunch bet and look what happened. Paid nine to one, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you might drop in this afternoon,” he said.

“Sure, but I was busy.”

“It doesn’t matter. When will I see you, Johnny?”

There was no use lying. I said, “Banghart I’m caught short. I didn’t lay off your bet. I held it. I can’t pay you right away.”

He was quite for a long time and all I could hear was my heart punching at my ribs. “Do you hear me?” I said. “I got caught. I haven’t got the dough. You’ll have to give me a little time.”

He said, “I’m not worrying about the money. Relax, Johnny. We all make mistakes at times. How much time will you need?”

“Nine thousand bucks is a lot of money. You’ll get every penny of it, Banghart, but I’ll need a couple weeks.”

“This is Wednesday, isn’t it? Supposing we say next Sunday?”

“Christ, Banghart, be reasonable.” My voice sounded like I was choking, I guess, but it was because of the way I was wound up inside. “I’ll get your money for you but I can’t pull it out of a hat.”

“Johnny,” he said, and his voice was still quiet and soft. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. We made a bet. You lost. I naturally want my money. But if you’re short, that’s all right. I’m giving you four days to raise the money. I think that’s enough time.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” I said.

“I’d advise you to try like the devil, Johnny.” His voice wasn’t soft any more. It had the sharp sound a trap makes when it springs shut. “I’ll expect to hear from you Sunday night. Call me at my Loop office. If I’m not there someone can tell you where to reach me.” He hung up.

I put the phone down. Four days. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. I knew guys in town who wouldn’t have given me ten minutes.

Something might break. I finished my drink and tried not to think I was kidding myself. I went down and got my car then and went out to the blonde’s. She was ready when I got there. I talked to the old man about how hot it was down in the yards, then Marie and I went out to the car.

When we went down the street the women on the porches stopped talking and looked at the car. I drove out north and she sat beside me, not saying anything, just smiling and looking happy.

She looked pretty good. She had on a light blue dress and a bow in her hair. She had her hair let down to her shoulders and it looked clean and bright blowing in the wind and left her face looking round and kind of soft.

She put her hand on my arm and looked at me and smiled.

“Don’t look that way, Johnny.”

“How do I look?”

“You look like your muscles are all bunched tight.”

“Let’s don’t worry about how I look.”

“All right, Johnny.” She took her hand away from my arm carefully, as if she was afraid I’d notice that it had been there.

“I’ve got troubles,” I said, “but they don’t have to bother you.”

“They do, Johnny. Is it what we talked about this afternoon?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Well, that’ll be over when we get married. They can’t make me say anything then, can they?”

“No,” I said shortly.

She had one idea in her mind now. She had me caught where she thought I couldn’t move. Maybe she thought she was doing all this because she loved me, but my guess was she figured she had me caught tight. She’d never let go now. The only mistake she made was telling me everything she knew.

When I got out past the city I pulled in at one of the dark beaches. It wasn’t far from where Alice and I stopped the night before.

We sat for a while in the car and then I said, “Let’s take a walk down to the water.”

“The sand is wet, isn’t it?”

“It’s all right here. Let’s go.”

We got out of the car and went down on the beach. There was a moon coming up across the lake, but there was a mist in the air that made the light weak and cloudy. This was a deserted section of the beach and the only noise was the faint lap of the water.

I didn’t know what I had in mind. We were close together and when her heels would twist in the sand she’d giggle and grab hold of my arm. When we got down to the water she shivered and moved closer to me.

“I hate water at night,” she said.

The lake looked black and restless. Light from the moon made a faint yellow path across it, and here and there you could see the flick of a whitecap. There was a light breeze coming up and the air was getting cooler. We were the only ones within miles of the place.

“Can you swim?” I said.

She shivered again and laughed nervously. “I guess I’ve always been too afraid. When I was a kid we used to go down to the beach a lot in the summer, but I never learned. I don’t know why but water has always scared me. Just thinking about it on a night like this gives me goose pimples all over. It looks so black and deep.”

I laughed. “I didn’t know you had such nutty ideas. The water won’t hurt you.”

“I know... but I’m still scared.”

“Let’s go wading now.”

“Now? It’s too cold, Johnny.” She backed away a little and said, “You go on in and I’ll watch.”

“Don’t be like that, honey.” I put my arms around her and pulled her close to me. “You wouldn’t be afraid if I was with you.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“Don’t be like that. I’ll put my coat on the ground and you can put your clothes on top of it. That’ll keep the sand out.”

She looked out at the water and shivered again. “All right, if you want me to. But I won’t go far.”

We took off our clothes and made a pile of them on top of my coat. I still didn’t know what I had in my mind, but it was there, like something dark and soft, on the edge of my thinking.

I went in first. The water was cold but I went out until it was up to my shoulders. I heard her squeal when she put one foot in the water, but she kept coming out until she was just a foot or so from me.

The water was up to her throat there and I could hear her teeth chattering. Her face looked small and white against the black water.

“I’m standing on my toes now,” she said. “I can’t go any farther.”

“You’re okay. I’m right here.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“No, I feel fine.”

I put my hands under her elbows and lifted her off the bottom, until the water was down below her shoulders.

“That better?” I said.

“Yes, but I’m so cold.”

I backed out slowly, step by step, until the water was almost up to my chin. Now it was over her head.

“Johnny, don’t. This is too deep. Take me back in.” Her voice was thin and scared.

I didn’t know whether this was it or not. I was thinking fast. I could say we were swimming and she got a cramp, and when I pulled her out it was too late. Nobody could say anything else.

I backed up a little more. All I had to do was let her go and she’d drown. She was only six feet from shallow water, but she’d lose her head and start fighting wildly, and then she’d get a mouthful of water and it would all be over.

She pulled herself close to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Johnny, I’m scared,” she whimpered. “Why don’t you take me in? Please, please, Johnny!”

“You’re all right, honey. Just let go my neck and I’ll tow you back in.”

“No, Johnny, no.” She was scared now, bad, and it made her frantic. Her thin little arms were tightening around my neck and I was having trouble breathing.

I knew this was the time.

I put my hands on her shoulders and shoved down hard. Her head went under the water and I felt her legs starting to kick wildly. I knew that in a minute she’d go crazy and start beating the water with her hands. When that happened all I had to do was let her go and the water would take care of everything else. I felt the thin bones in her shoulders twisting and then her arms slipped from my neck and she began clawing at the water with her fingers.

It was just at that second I heard the automobile. I shot a look back at the beach and I saw the headlights of a car coming along the road. The lights bounced up and down as the car hit the ruts in the road, then swept over the beach and out over the water.

The light hit me in the eyes, blinding me for a second. I heard the motor cut and then a voice yelled, “How’s the water?” and I knew whoever was in the car had seen me.

She was still fighting the water. I pulled her up fast and got my arms around her body. When the guys in the car saw her head next to mine they snapped off the lights and we were left alone in the dark water.

She was choking and crying. Her arms were around my neck and her fingernails were digging into my shoulders.

“Take me in, Johnny,” she said, but she was crying and choking so much the words were just gasping noises.

I moved into shallow water with her and I felt weak and scared.

“Just take it easy, honey. You’re all right now,” I said.

“Why did you do it, Johnny?” she said, with a kind of gasping sob.

“I got a cramp. It doubled me up for a second and I pulled you under with me. That’s all it was, honey.”

I didn’t know whether she believed me or not but it was all I could think to say. After she was able to stand we went up on the beach. We dried ourselves with my shirt and got back into our clothes. The other car had pulled away by the time we were dressed. We went back to my car and got in and I gave her a cigarette.

From the light of the match I could see the white circle of her face. Her lips were blue and every now and then she’d shudder a little.

“Would you like to go somewhere and get a hot drink?” I said.

“I... I’d like to go home, Johnny.”

I drove slowly to her home. My mind was twisting a lot of ideas around. I didn’t know whether she knew I’d tried to kill her. If she did I couldn’t leave her now.

When we pulled up to her place the houses on the street were dark. I cut the motor and then I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to me. Her body felt tense but when I tilted her chin up she let me kiss her a couple of times on her lips.

“Mad at me?”

“No, it’s just that I was so scared out there, Johnny. Then when you told me you had a cramp, I got to thinking of how it would be if anything happened to you.”

“Would that bother you?”

She turned her face up to me and kissed me hard on the mouth. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but I decided to take the chance. Everything inside me felt so tight and scared that I knew I would have trouble trying anything else that night.

We stayed out in the car for about half an hour and then I took her up to the porch. I made a date with her for the next night and kissed her a few more times and went back to the car.

When I turned left on Belmont I noticed that a blue Nash was following me. When I got over to the drive it was still there.

I gave the car to the doorman at the hotel to put away for me. As I started toward the lobby, I saw the blue Nash pull past and head north on Madison.

There were two guys in the front seat and they were looking straight ahead.