The Black Path of Fear

14

There I was, walking back along the same way again, the way out to Hermosa Drive, just like the day I’d found the wallet and first got the job. Only now I knew what was up ahead; then I hadn’t. Now I was walking toward death; then I’d been walking toward love. It was night now, to match the difference of my aim; then it had been light.

I didn’t mind the walk. I didn’t mind the time it took. I wanted it to be late when I got there. Good and late. That’s why I didn’t try to hitch my way out, as I easily could have done. I wasn’t in any hurry. I was sure of getting there. Nothing could have stopped me.

I plodded along under the stars, unhurried, even-paced, steady, and sometimes a breeze from the sea would cut across me and play around with me a little and then go on its way again. Then the night would be calm and still again, like it had been before. Once in a while a car would streak by, making a comet path out of its heads that slowly dissolved again after it was well gone.

It’s a funny feeling, to keep going and know that ahead of you, when you get where you’re going, two men are going to die. Or at least you’d think it would be, but it wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything at all about it. I didn’t even hate much any more. I was like all frozen up about it. I suppose that’s a bad way to feel, but it makes it awfully easy to do a thing like that. You’re just a machine, and the switch handle has been thrown away; you can’t be turned off any more.

Those stars looked funny, winking to each other, giving each other the eye, all over the vault above me, as if they knew what was up and had seen so much of this, it was an old story to them. As if they were saying, “There is goes again.”

It must have been about three, I guess, when I got out to Hermosa Drive; I don’t know for sure. I turned off the main highway and walked down to the place. They had the gate locked now, cutting across the right of way, but that didn’t stop me. I knew by heart the places where the wall was easiest to get over. I walked along it till I found one of them, all the way down toward the shore, where it ran down into the sand. When the tide was low, like it was now, all you had to do was reach and pull yourself up over it from standing level. But even if the tide had been high, I think I would have swum out and around the end of it and come floating back on the inside. He even had the ocean staked off in front of his place; it was his own private property.

That’s one thing those who live in fear should learn: you can keep a man out, but you can’t keep death out.

I was squirming up the beach now, coming at the place from the front. It was built to face the ocean, as I’ve told you. That door at which I’d always picked them up with the car was in reality the rear door, though it was the only one they ever used.

I was on the inside now. They’d already stopped living, but they didn’t know about it yet.

The little private cabanas that they’d used for sun-bathing stood up there over to one side, black against the white gleam of the sand. They looked like sentry boxes. There was a low, rumbling sound, and something came rushing at me from around in back of them, too quick to be focused.

They had a dog on the inside, Job’s dog. They thought that was protection enough; that and the gate and the wall. It would have been ordinarily. He would have torn to pieces anything on two legs he found on the wrong side of the fence.

I stopped short and held it, to see if I was going to take or not. He curbed his onslaught only at the last minute and sent up a spray of sand all over my legs, trying to dig in. When you’ve once made friends with a dog it doesn’t wear off again. That’s the difference between a dog and men.

“Hello, Wolf,” I said, “I’m back,” and groped for his skull a couple of times.

He was more of a nuisance trying to love me up than he had been trying to chew me up. He kept getting in my way.

“All right, go back to sleep,” I said; “this has nothing to do with you.”

The lights were all out in the house. I’d never had a key to the house, so I’d have to go in there and get them the best I could. I didn’t want to ring and mix Job up in it. Job was all right; I had nothing against him. I’d sat and eaten my meals at the same table with him the whole time I was there.

I walked around to the side and followed that back, to where Roman’s windows were. That terrace he had outside his room helped a lot; that made a break, a notch in the straight up and down of the walls. I used the window indentations below for footrests — they had these Spanish-type iron grilles over them — and managed to get a grip on them, then hoisted myself up and over.

Then I stood a minute and looked down. Wolf was sitting there on his haunches and watching, head cocked to one side in curiosity. I thumbed him back toward the beach, but he didn’t move.

I turned to face the way I was going. He had the windows all open; you just stepped in, without even lifting your feet. The room was dark and quiet, but I knew he was in it. I could hear him breathing and I could smell the alcohol he’d brought back on his breath from wherever it was he’d been earlier tonight.

I felt my way in and around and over the way in which I remembered the bed to have been, that one and only time I was ever up here before, that first day.

I traced the bottom of it with my hand and felt along the side of it, and when I’d gone far enough up toward the head, I sat down on the edge of it, close beside him. The mattress sank a little under my weight, but he didn’t seem to feel it.

I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to know whom he was getting it from when he got it. I reached out for a little lamp he had there close beside the bed and clicked it on. Twin halos of light sprang out, one at each end of the shade, and showed up our faces and a little of the margin around them. The shade itself was opaque, to rest the eyes.

Then I just sat back and waited for the shine to percolate through to him, sitting on the bias to him. It took some time. He was sleeping like a log. He didn’t miss her. Murder agreed with him. He must have been brought up on it. He must have been weaned on it. Good; I was going to see that he got some more.

I let him take his own time about waking up. I sat and waited quietly on the edge of the bed, right next to him, looking at him, watching his face. I thought of all the ugly people I’d run into in Havana the night before, and there’d been some beauts. Quon the dope fiend, and that Danish sea captain. But he was the ugliest of the lot, this man here. To me he was, anyway. Because he’d killed the thing I loved.

The light started to filter through to his brain. He got restless. He tried to turn over away from it and get it off his face. I took him by the shoulder and eased him back again the way he’d been the first time. But not violently, just by a sort of indirect pressure.

The lids of his eyes flickered, made a couple of false starts to go up. Then suddenly they made it all the way, stayed that way, and the thing was under way at last.

First there was just disbelief in them; he thought he was having a bad dream or the light was playing tricks on him. He shuttered them rapidly two or three times in succession, to get me out of them. I stayed in, and he had to believe it.

I watched the fear come into them slowly, changing them, making them glassy and swelling them.

“Hello, Roman,” I said. “Nice night for dying, isn’t it?”

His voice was still asleep. He had to shake it to wake it up. “Jordan,” he whispered hoarsely. “Jordan.”

I put my open hand to the base of his throat and just left it there, resting lightly, relaxedly. “Don’t try to call for him in full voice,” I said. “Because I can stop it, down here, quicker than you can get it all the way up and out. You’ll only bring the thing on all the quicker. While you’re quiet, you’re alive.”

The collar of his pajamas was in the way a little, so I took my other hand and spread the wings farther out, first one and then the other, where they wouldn’t interfere. He still went in for those candy-striped satins, I saw; this time black and gold.

He kept his voice down to a sandpapered whisper. Or maybe that was all he could drum up anyway.

“Scotty. Scotty.”

I leaned over a little toward him to catch it better. “Yes? What is it?” I asked pleasantly.

“I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars. In the bank here in town. Check to bearer. Just let me get over to the desk — write it. Over there, Scotty — other side of the room. Or bring the blank check and pen over here to the bed; I’ll write it right where I am. I’ll put my arms up high, against the back of the bed; won’t move while you’re over there getting it.”

I considered it, to torture him a little.

“Hundred and fifty thousand, Scotty. The works; everything I’ve got in my account down here.”

“I want Eve back.”

His hands were all over me, playing tag, chasing one another all around my shoulders and face.

“Two hundred thousand. Chicago account thrown in. Two hundred and fifty. Listen, won’t you listen? A quarter of a million.”

“Keep your hands down. You’re annoying me. I want Eve. Didn’t you hear me? I want Eve.”

He rolled his head from side to side on the pillow in despair. “Scotty, everything I’ve got. New York, Philly. Dummy accounts, safety boxes. Three quarters of a million dollars cash. Everything. You’ll own the world. Just let me walk out of here. Just let me walk down the road, the way I am. Just let me be — alive.”

“Eve. I want to hear her talk to me again. I want to see her look at me again. I want to see her move around in front of me again.”

I’d seen these old-time big shots of the twenties die in movies lots of times, and they always went down spunky, shooting and snarling, “Come and get me.” He didn’t; he died all spongy. But maybe he was old by now; I don’t know. The twenties were way behind us. What do you think he was doing? He was stroking my arm, trying to wheedle me into letting him live. Down, and down, and down, like an angry cat’s fur.

“Everything, everything — just let me live.”

“But I don’t want everything. I don’t want anything. All I want is something much easier than that. It’s hard to rake three quarters of a million dollars together; it takes you all your life; it’s hard to hand it over to a stranger just like that! All I want is just Eve. Just arrange to have her brought back to me; that’s all you’ve got to do. That should be easy for a guy like you, used to pulling wires.”

“I can’t, Scotty,” he whimpered.

The low-voiced conversation was nearing the explosion point. I could feel it coming on, though I didn’t know from one moment to the other what we were going to say next.

“You’re asking me for the one thing I can’t do. Why won’t you take something else?”

“Then why do you have things done when you can’t undo them? Why do you take things away when you can’t give them back?”

There if came now. I could feel it pouring down the veins of my arms like a hot tide.

“So the only thing I’ll take from you is the one thing I can’t give you back: your life.”

I plowed deep into him with both arms. I twisted the thing around two ways at once, the thing that was his neck; one hand working one way, the other going against it. It seemed to be in layers; the outer layer, the skin, moved one way; the under part, the muscular column below, went against it. All that came out was a squeak. The echo of a smothered scream that was trapped below as it closed up.

Then you couldn’t hear anything much, except the continuous rustling sound the sheets made, as if he were being very restless in his bed. From this side to that, from that side to this. Then his legs would go straight up and pull everything up to a point for a minute, making a tent of the bedclothes. Then they’d collapse again, and the tent would deflate. Then from this side to that, from that side to this, like the blades of a pair of crazed scissors. Then straight up again, almost as if he were practicing calisthenics. It wasn’t at that end he was trying to escape; it was at the other, but it couldn’t show itself at the other, so it ran down to that end.

I was conscious of everything in the second or two that it was going on. I could even think objectively. I can even remember some of my thoughts. “How long it takes to kill a human being. You never get through.” “Isn’t he ever going to die? Die, will you? Die, will you? Die!” And with each “Die” I’d lunge downward with all might and main, until seams of the woodwork would creak a little, complainingly. And at each lunge his tongue would start forward, as if working on a reverse principle to my pressure. Then it would slip back again. It was like working some kid’s toy or plaything, built to do a certain thing when you push in at just the right hidden spot.

I could even see the shadow of my own head, thrown up on the wall by that halo from the lamp. I could see it jitter a little, and then go down out of sight, and then come up again, and then jitter some more. You couldn’t make out what it was doing — on the wall. It looked like the head of a man engaged in some strenuous but harmless thing, like packing a crammed valise on top of the bed.

Then suddenly it was swept way offside somewhere, snatched from close before me, and set down again on some far wall, and at different density, as if the original limited halo it had been swimming in had been flushed completely off there and swept away on some new torrential source of reflection. There was a full-length shadow of a man in its place now. Triangular, starting narrow, ending wide, and going all the way up. And I hadn’t moved, and the lamp shade hadn’t moved, so I knew what it was.

“Wait a minute, Ed — I’ll get him!”

The rattles had finally sounded, and the fangs were out.

I swung the two of us around: over, and off the side, and down to the floor in a barrellike somersault. The blast came just as it was half completed. We must have been still above the bed line, in process of going over. It was just dimly noted background noise, an accompaniment to the main event of clawing and flopping that was going on.

When we started I was on top, he was below me; when we ended he was on top, I was below. My hands were still fused to that throat of his; I’d never let go, even falling.

He came down on top of me, heavy and paunchy and bouncy, and then we both just lay there, still.

I didn’t feel anything, so I knew it had missed. I knew he was coming over to see.

I saw that I’d killed Roman by now, anyway; he wasn’t moving any more. His chest was pasted flat against mine, heart to heart, and I could go by that. There was no counterpoint to my own ticking; I would have felt it if there was any, after such a struggle. So I knew his heart had stopped; he was dead.

Good. That was what I’d been trying for.

He was on his way over to see. We were on the window side of the bed, the two of us, and it was in the way; he couldn’t see us from where he was. We both lay still, Roman because he was dead, I because that would bring Jordan over to see. I could see him from under it, his feet in those straw sandals he always wore. I saw them start to move forward, a step at a time. It was funny to see just detached feet, by themselves, walk like that.

I let go the throat. There was nothing to choke out of it any more. The skin almost seemed to stick to my fingers, like pully taffy, I’d been kneading it so long. I got hold of Roman’s limp arm in the gaudy striped sleeve, collared it just below the elbow, pushed it up perpendicular above the bed line. My grip around the bone held it up straight, although the hand bent down on itself a little. I let it sort of grab at the coverings atop the bed and stay like that for a minute.

I hoped it looked like a guy who was out of breath and all in trying to lift himself up off the floor by grabbing at something to raise himself against.

It worked. He spoke to the dead hand. He said, “Are you all right, Ed? Did I get him, Ed?”

I spaded the back of my own hand in flat behind the wire from the lamp that ran down beside the wall, close to where my head was resting. Just as his feet were ready to come out past the lower corner of the bed I jerked my wrist out. The lamp came down and went out with a pop and a hiss of glass.

It didn’t hurt the rest of the room much; he had the door wide open, but it made it dim and shady down there in that little lane where we were both lying.

He made the turn around the foot of the bed and stopped and looked. I think he could see the pajama stripes across Roman’s back even in the half-light. They were uppermost.

He couldn’t shoot. There was too much of Roman and not enough of me. He started to lean over, to try to find out what was keeping his boss down like that. That was his mistake. That was just what I wanted him to do.

I grabbed for his ankles, one hand for each. I got them and I jerked. The gun went off again, but in a sort of loose, unguided way. You could tell it was already half out of his hand when the finger guard pulled home. I saw the trajectory of light it spit go upward, on a slant toward the ceiling, instead of downward toward me.

It hit the floor before he did. His arc of descent was wider. It made a neat little rap; he made a heavy sprawling thud.

I wasted a minute to grab for it. Then I skated it deep under the bed, with the curve of my hand for a hocky stick. I didn’t want it. I had a funny kind of heat on. I wanted to get at him with my hands.

I tipped Roman, like the dead weight of a mattress lying on you, and pulled myself out from under. He was up again by that time himself. We killed the distance between us with a double-headed rush, came up fiat together. We went at each other in the old kind of a fight, the basic kind. Doing your own work yourself.

I would have thought he was no good without his gun, but he was all right. I guess he’d had to fight this way in his green days, before he’d ever had a gun, and it wasn’t new to him. My head would jar, and I’d feel it go all the way down my spine and die out, so I knew he’d hit. But that was the only way I knew. I had that sort of frozen-up feeling as much as ever. I was as dead to pain as I was to reason. Maybe it helped; I don’t know.

One of mine broke him away from me, sent him all the way back to where the window line ended the room. But they were all open, and he hit one of the open places and went through without interference and kept going out onto the terrace beyond. I went out after him, and it went ahead out there.

My arms were tired and I couldn’t feel anything any more when they hit him, but he’d jar back away from me and my shoulder would sort of recoil; that’s how I knew when I had.

One time he went back up against the balustrade I’d climbed over before and bent a little too far out from the waist up. Then recovered and pulled himself forward again. But that made his timing go haywire; he went right into my arm head-on. Added his own momentum to that of the punch, so that he was coming forward to meet it, instead of just standing still. It was a bombshell.

My shoulder wrenched itself almost out of gear, and I could see his face going back away from me. It was the last time I saw it. It looked all dopey from the blows; just round and doughy, with the features all tucked in small behind it. What did I care about what his face looked like, anyway? It went back into the night. And then went out, in front of my punch-blurred eyes.

I missed the rest of it. He wasn’t up there with me any more. I knew he’d gone over. Just one straw sandal had stayed behind.

I looked, and he was already down there. The fall wasn’t enough to kill him, and there was a lawn there where he was lying. The dog was at a taut half crouch and bristling; I could see that from where I was.

I don’t know if there was blood on Jordan, and that was what did it, or his senses detected the heat of the fight still reeking up from him, and that excited him.

I hollered down, “Get him, Wolf!” I didn’t think he would. He was Job’s dog, not mine.

His head flattened; his ears lay back, and he went in for his throat like a streak.

The arms and legs came together, like when an insect’s helpless on its back, and then opened out again. The dog was busy there in the middle of them!

I turned and went back into the room. I walked zigzag along a straight line back to the bed. The freeze was beginning to thaw, and I felt all mushy.

I turned Roman over with my foot. It was too much trouble to bend down. Something blinked at me in the shadowy light, and for a minute I thought one of his eyes was open again and he was shamming.

Then I saw I hadn’t killed him after all. It was just in front of his ear, a little too far over to be one of his regular eyes. It glistened sleekly, as though somebody’d smudged him there with a dab of wet tar. His own bodyguard had done the job for me.

I couldn’t make it out the way I’d come in any more. I went slowly out of the room, leaving the door open behind me, the way Jordan had stood it, and down the upper hall and around to face the stairs.

It was lit up down there now. Job was standing down there in the lower hall at the foot of the stairs. His face was tilted toward me in a static sort of way, as though he’d been standing there motionless like that for some time past.

I looked down at him. “Go ahead,” I said dully. “What are you waiting for?”

He just kept looking at me. He didn’t say a word until I got all the way down to him.

Then his head hitched curtly toward the end of the hall, where you went out. “I’ll unlock the door for you. Go ‘head, man. Then I’ve got to go up and find them and do some phoning in, I reckon.”

I passed close by him, eye to eye. “Don’t forget to tell them what I look like,” I said gruffly.

“I ain’t seen no one to tell them about,” he said. “They been rowing with each other up there ever since they first come home; I knew it was going to end up like this.”

He opened the door for me. Then he said, “She was a lovely lady. I heard them talking about it today; that’s how I know.”

I went on out into the dark. I looked back at him over my shoulder. “You won’t hear them talking about it any more.”

He closed the door.

I went around by the side of the house and headed down toward the beach. The dog saw me and left Jordan and came trotting up and fell in beside me. His muzzle was all wet and clotted; he seemed to have grown a stringy beard.

“It was my job,” I said, “not yours.”

I skirted where Jordan was lying. It was just as well it was dark. It wasn’t good to look at him very close any more.

I found the low place in the wall, where it ran down across the sand and into the water; the wall that hadn’t been good enough to keep death out. I gave the dog a thump on the ribs, and I hoisted myself up and over.

I could hear the dog running back and forth on the other side, looking for a way to get through so he could come with me. He whined a little.

I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay behind in there either, with just two dead men for company.