Baby Moll

“What is this?” Macy said. “What the hell happened here?” He looked from Owen to Diane.

Owen leaned against the doorframe, sobbing for breath. “I caught her coming... out of my room,” he said. He pointed to one of the many oil paintings on the wall. “She... slashed it. The dirty goddam bitch slashed my... painting.” He started to cry.

We looked at the picture he was talking about. It was a seascape. Somebody had taken a knife or razor blade to it. The canvas was in tatters.

“You come in here and do that?” Macy said threateningly.

Diane turned her head to look at the picture. Her face was beginning to get that smooth motionless look. Owen’s slap had snapped her loose from something that had been building up within her. “I came in here. I just wanted to look at them. I wasn’t going to hurt anything.”

“She cut it!” Owen blubbered sickeningly, hanging on to the doorframe.

I saw Charley Rinke standing behind him in the hall, watching with an oddly fascinated expression.

“I didn’t touch your picture,” Diane said, with a trace of contempt. “I don’t have anything to cut with.” Her voice was becoming remote. She looked at the blood on her ankle.

“You gonna believe her? I caught her coming out! She did it! Shediditshediditshe—”

Macy walked up to his brother and hit him across the face with the back of his hand. Owen shut up. There was a look of bewilderment in his eyes. He put out a hand, gropingly.

“Macy...”

“Shut up, you fool,” Macy said in a deadly calm voice.

Owen’s face changed gradually, stiffening into hate that was deep and aching. He straightened up and his breathing slowed. He looked coldly at Macy. It was a look that had taken him all his life to achieve, and in a way it was a frightening thing. He saved some of it for Diane. She looked back without flinching. Owen turned and walked down the hall, his body stiff, his legs wobbling slightly. He looked straight ahead. In a few seconds the front door slammed, but not loudly.

Macy’s gaze shifted to the ruined painting, and his mouth softened. “Goddam fool,” he muttered almost tenderly. “All right,” he said, looking about him. “What the hell are you all standing around for? Clear out. You, Taggart, get out of here. Rinke, get back to the books.”

They drifted away slowly, and the knotted tension slackened. Diane didn’t move until the others had gone.

“You get, too,” Macy said to her. “Clean yourself up. You look like you been raped in a telephone booth.”

Diane didn’t look at either of us. She went out, taking care not to step too hard on the ankle that had been hurt. The cut didn’t look deep. I could see through the tear in her blouse at the armpit. She held that arm close to her side.

Macy looked at the torn painting again. “Now what the hell got into that crazy dame?” he said.

“You think she cut it?” I asked him.

“Sure I think she cut it.” He made a fist and put his other hand over it. “Oh, well. They ain’t worth nothing anyway.”

“Owen seemed pretty upset.”

“My little brother,” Macy said scornfully. “Aw, he’ll get over it. I guess I’d better go upstairs and see if the ruckus woke Aimee up. She ain’t feeling so good. Come on.”

Chapter Seventeen

Aimee was lying awake in bed when we came in. She blinked at the sudden light. There were drying tears on her cheeks. The bed sheets were twisted.

“Was Diane yelling?” she said, and began to cry again. Macy picked her up and held her gently.

“It wasn’t anything,” he said. “Diane’s all right. She’ll come upstairs and go to bed with you pretty soon.”

“I can’t sleep,” Aimee moaned.

“Your stomach still upset?”

Aimee nodded. She chewed on the knuckles of one fist.

Macy looked at me. “Get her some water, will you, Pete? There’s some capsules in there, too. Bring one.”

I went into the bathroom. I could hear him talking to her, soothingly, in a voice I had rarely heard him use. I ran water into a glass and picked up one of the capsules.

Macy put it between Aimee’s stiff lips, gave her some water. She swallowed dutifully. “That’ll help,” Macy said encouragingly. “Your tummy will feel better.”

“Are we going to go boat riding tomorrow?” Aimee whimpered.

“Well... I don’t think so, baby. Daddy’s still busy. I’ll tell you what. One day soon we’re going to go on a long boat ride. For months and months. Would you like that?”

I hoped the boat ride he had in mind wouldn’t be across the Styx.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Where we goin’, Daddy?”

“I’m not sure yet. But we’re going. I promise you that. We’ll go places we’ve never been to, and we’ll have a good time together.”

“Can Diane go, too?”

“Sure,” Macy said, after a quick pause. “Diane can go, too.”

He put Aimee back into bed and tucked the sheet around her. He took a book from the bedside table and began to read to her. He had to hold the book fairly close to his face so he could see the print. I hung around feeling useless until Diane came in. She had washed her face and combed her hair, but the blouse was still torn. There was a puffiness about her eyes. She took a clean blouse from her dresser and went into the bathroom to change.

Aimee went to sleep in the midst of a sentence and Macy put up the book with some reluctance; he was enjoying the story.

We went downstairs. “Let’s go to the garage,” he said without hesitation. “Something you ought to see.”

I followed him outside to the garage. At the rear of the building he pointed to a large wooden box, about four feet long, filled with old tires and odds and ends of junk.

“Pull it this way,” he said. I put my hands on the box. It moved with astonishing ease, soundlessly. The frame of the box was mounted on rollers. Under it was a flight of steps. Two small square lights studding the concrete sides of the staircase provided illumination.

We descended. I went first. Macy reached up and pulled the box back over the entrance. It bumped snugly against the back wall of the garage. I stooped to go through a doorway at the base of the steps, found myself in a good-sized room with a low ceiling. It was air conditioned. The walls were lined with some kind of acoustical material, tinted pastel yellow. There were fluorescent lights screwed to the ceiling. Charley Rinke worked at a long table, his shirt sleeves rolled up. He was surrounded by stacks of account books, papers held together with rubber bands, boxes, a filing cabinet drawer. He looked haggard, glanced up quickly when we came in, then went back to work with an adding machine. Paper littered the floor. There was a full ashtray beside Rinke’s elbow, and a pitcher of water.

“This is what you might call the nerve center, Pete,” Macy said quietly. “I hate all this bookwork, but it’s necessary.” He walked quickly to a large safe with a formidable gray steel door. The safe was embedded in concrete at the back wall of the room. He swung the door open, gestured toward the safe.

“Better to have all this here than in town,” Macy explained. “Any trouble at the gates and I can seal this room up with a couple tons of broken concrete. Take a steam shovel to find anything, even if somebody wanted to go to the trouble of ferrying one out here.”

Rinke made a final calculation on the adding machine, yawned, threw down his pencil and got up to join us.

There was a lot of cash in the safe. Enough to make me wonder what it would be like to own that much, at one time, to be able to pick it up in neat packages, stack it, look at it.

“How much?” I said.

“I’m not sure,” Macy said. “It would take two large suitcases to hold all of it, and most of the bills are hundreds. A few fifties, some twenties. Altogether, about three quarters of a million dollars. I’ve got more, of course. Stashed in three banks. The money I pay tax on.” He shut the safe, pushing with both hands against the door.

“He’s giving it all up,” Rinke said, in a nervously high voice. He cleared his throat. “He’s giving all of it to Maxine. All of it.”

“That’s right,” Macy said, not looking at Rinke.

Rinke gave me a guarded look, wondering what I thought about it. His lips were thin with anger.

“Maxine’s coming here tomorrow night,” Barr said lightly. “I’m telling him then.” He looked around the room. “I don’t want it no more. None of it. I’m taking what money I can and I’m leaving the country.”

“Macy — ” Rinke said tenaciously, as if he were preparing to reopen an argument that had flourished for days.

“I don’t want to hear no more,” Macy said. “You got your work to do. Just do it and don’t bother me. Don’t give me any pep talks. Don’t try to talk me into something I don’t want to do. I just want out. That’s all.”

Rinke took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit one, steadying his hand. “Okay, Macy,” he said. “Okay, I won’t try to say anything to you.” He walked to the table, then turned suddenly, pointing with the cigarette, words tumbling.

“But he’s coming here. He’s coming here tomorrow night, and he’s walking right into our hands. Maybe two or three men, that’s all he’ll bring with him. Can’t you see it? It’d be so easy then to get rid of him—”

“Shut up!” Macy rasped. Then, more quietly, “Shut up, Charley. Don’t try to put ideas in my head I don’t want to hear.” He snorted. “Charley, sometimes I think you want to run this outfit.”

Rinke turned away, tapped a couple of keys on the adding machine. “Okay,” he said, resignedly. “Forget it.” I sensed again a silent appeal from him, from the staring magnified eyes. When I didn’t respond he sat down and went back to work, doggedly, flipping the stiff pages of a ledger with competent fingers, making notations with his pencil. I wondered if he still nourished the rebellious thoughts far back in his mind, where they wouldn’t get in the way of the precise click of integers.

Chapter Eighteen

Later that night I awakened sitting straight up in bed, muscles tense. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was. I felt a sense of dread, as if I were being watched from the sable darkness around me. I breathed deeply, ridding my throat of deep panic. I stood up and walked to the windows, looked out. It was after one o’clock.

I dressed, putting on the shoulder holster over my shirt, and went into the hall. The door to Owen’s room was open, but he wasn’t inside. I went upstairs. There were no lights on, but moonlight thinned the darkness. At Macy’s room I tapped softly on the door. There was no answer. I listened closely, heard him breathing in sleep.

At the end of the hall a door was open and I saw Mrs. Rinke inside, standing in front of a window, looking toward the sea. She had been in bed. The other bed hadn’t been touched. Apparently Rinke was still working.

As I turned to walk away my shoe bumped the doorframe. It was a small noise, but Evelyn Rinke turned, a hand at her throat, a flat cry on her lips.

I stepped inside the bedroom so she could identify me. She was wearing the same nightgown she had had on the night before.

“Pete?”

“Yes.”

“You — startled me.” I saw the movement of her throat muscles.

“I was just looking around,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Please don’t go, Pete.”

“Maybe it would be better if I did.”

“No — I wanted somebody to talk to. I can’t sleep. It’s useless, trying to sleep. Please, Pete — a cigarette?”

I took a pack from my shirt pocket, shook one free for her. I lit it for her.

“Thanks, Pete.” She turned toward the windows again, her cheeks flattening as she drew on the cigarette. There were tired lines under her eyes. “I’ve lived through another day,” she said with a tone of wonder. “Now I have to face another. Tell me, Pete, was it that way with you? Did you hate to see another day coming?”

“Usually.” My voice was rough with a sympathy I couldn’t conceal.

“I slept this morning,” she said. “Two whole hours. That’s really... a triumph, you know. The rest of the day, I sat and let my nerves fight it out. I wondered what it would be like to kill myself. I wondered if I would feel any regret, in that last tenth part of a second.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About four years. It didn’t come all at once. It was like a slow tightening. Days when I didn’t feel quite right. Then one day it seemed as if I was hit by a big fist. Some of the nerves came loose. There’s one now, twisting down my side until I think I’ll go crazy.”

She put a hand to her side, her face lined as if she were going to cry. She stretched out her arms, fingers against the metal slats of the Venetian blinds. Her breasts heaved fretfully beneath their frail covering.

“I’ve thought about it, Pete,” she said. “I’ve had little to do but think about why, why, why I should be like this.” The cigarette wasn’t doing anything for her any more. She turned from the windows to put it in an ashtray, then came back.

“Charley loved me,” she said softly. “Once. Charley had a brilliant mind. He still does. But there’s something inside him. Something obscene. He takes pleasure in knowing the wrong kind of men, sharing their secrets. We drifted into this kind of life. He stuck fast to it, gave up a good-paying job. It’s too late for him to go back now. All the good is gone now. I smell the evil that seeps through his skin from associating with people like... Macy Barr. There isn’t any way for me to get away. I think he’d kill me if I tried now. Devotion turned to possession; tenderness to lust. It was when I began to realize this that the fist began to pound me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“Pete,” she said with a dry sob, “I can’t even cry any more. I’m just a crazy cardboard cutout of a woman. I loathe the man I can’t get away from. The people who live around me sicken my stomach. My nerves torture me, all the time.” Her mouth was petulant. She put her hands flat against her stomach, smoothed the nightgown close to her skin, pressing the hands as far as her rounded thighs. “I haven’t slept with him in months and months. The thought of him touching me makes me retch.” She was whispering now. “I’ve tried others. They... handled me as though I were a common streetwalker. It was no good — no good at all.”

She reached out and took my hand, laid it against her side. “Can’t you feel it? It twists and turns and jumps — they’re knots and coils, tight and squirming — ” She let go of my hand. She took the nightgown in both hands, twisted it, tore it, an expression of anguish on her glistening face. The gown was ripped, it hung away from her slim body. She fell against me, kissing me anywhere her lips touched my flesh. Her cheeks were hot and wet. “Make them still,” she said urgently. “Give me rest, Pete. You can do it. Do it — do it.”

I should have forced her away then but I hesitated an instant, and when the instant had passed it was too late. She was keyed to the point of hysteria. I was afraid of what might happen if I left her then.

“It won’t be an answer,” I whispered as I put her on the bed. “For a little while, maybe. That’s all.” Then I couldn’t say any more. She moaned once and held me tightly, tightly, with all her strength.

When I left her, she was sleeping. Even in sleep the tenseness hadn’t left her features. I wished I could help her. But there was nothing I could do. It was a lonely struggle. She would be the only winner, or the only loser.

I went downstairs and walked toward my room. Beyond the French doors I saw a man standing on the patio. From the size of him I knew it must be Taggart. He stood there without moving for half a minute, smoking slowly. Then he dropped the cigarette, walked down the terrace toward the bay.

I opened the doors and stepped outside. Taggart had reached the sand. I could see him against the sheen of moonlight on the water. He walked along at the edge of the tide, his head turned toward the bay as if he were searching for something. He carried a large towel over one arm.

When he passed from sight around a bend in the island, I walked away from the house toward a growth of trees that covered the northern tip of the island. Most of the tangle of scrub had been cleared from among the palms, and hardy grass matted the rocky ridge of land almost to the slap of the waves.

Through the bent shadowy trunks with their saw-toothed thatching I picked up Taggart again. This time he wasn’t alone. In a sheltered cove he extended the towel to a naked, dripping Diane. Her hair was silver in the moonlight, the lift of her arm liquid. Taggart didn’t take his eyes off her as she dried herself, turning to cape the towel across her back, lifting one foot and then the other to the grasp of it. When she had finished she spread the towel on the wind-decked sand, lay down on it.

Taggart turned his head to follow her movements as she laid down on the towel. His hands came up unhurriedly and he unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, folded it and put it beside the towel. Then he unbuckled his pants, stepped out of them. When he had finished undressing he lowered himself to her.

I was about to trudge back to the house when I noticed a movement behind one of the trees not more than ten yards from where Taggart and the blonde Diane embraced. It was a man, shifting his weight very slowly to obtain a better view, taking care not to be heard. I put a hand on the square butt of the .38, then relaxed. The observer had turned his body just enough for me to recognize him. It was Owen Barr. I strained my eyes toward the tree behind which he had concealed himself, but I couldn’t see him any more.

I was a little surprised at the eagerness with which Diane was receiving the huge, slow-witted gunman. I had a feeling this was only a repetition of other meetings between them. Then I grinned a bit wryly, realizing it didn’t make much difference, and went back to my room.

Once there I felt I could use a drink and walked to the living room, helped myself to a bottle of good Scotch from the bar there. I took that and a glass of ice with four fingers of soda back to the bedroom, propped myself up on the bed and had a long cold one in the dark.

I thought about the strange crew assembled in this house. They made my head hurt. Sleep poured down on me like an avalanche. Before I was buried in it there was a warm clear light shining through the murkiness of twisted, pulped lives. Elaine. I reached out to her, forgetting all the rest.

I don’t know how long I slept. When I awakened I stared into darkness as if I hadn’t been sleeping at all, just dozing. I listened to a ratlike scratching, located the source of the sound near the dresser. I thought I heard someone breathing. Without moving on the bed I took my .38 from the nearby table, transferred it to my left hand. I reached up and found the light switch, turned on the lamp.

Owen Barr lurched away from the dresser, turned to me with a foolish grin. He took his hand out of the top drawer but kept it pressed against the front of the dresser for support.

“Well,” he said, his lips loose, his eyes feverishly jovial, “am I in the wrong room? Huh?”

“It would seem that way.” I kept the automatic pointed at him.

He gestured stickily with his free hand, listed unsteadily. I wondered if he was as drunk as he was trying to make out.

“Well, ’scuse me,” Owen said, sniffing wetly. He took a step forward, but had to return to his support. “Y’see, I was looking for whisky. I thought this was my room, ‘r somethin’.”

“Sure.”

He pointed. “Y’got some whisky over there.”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

He blinked. Then he leered knowingly. “Never have enough whisky.”

I put my fingers around the bottle, without looking away from him and heaved it suddenly in his direction. He caught it with surprising deftness.

“Well,” he said, licking his lips. “Well, thanks.”

“Suppose you could drink it someplace else?”

“Oh, sure,” he said airily. He put both hands around the bottle and set a course for the door, pausing once to lean against the wall. Then he was gone and I heard him mumbling in the hall. The door to his room clicked shut.

I got up and looked into the hall. He was gone, all right. I shut my own door and looked at the drawer Owen had been fumbling through. There was nothing in it but the large envelope containing the newspaper clippings Macy had turned over to me. The envelope had been opened. A couple of the clippings were loose in the bottom of the drawer. I assembled all of them, counted. There were only three stories about the fire left. I wondered what Owen was going to do with the other one. But I didn’t really care.

Chapter Nineteen

Clouds boiled in off the Atlantic early next morning and it rained until after lunch, then cleared off.

In the afternoon some of us, including Macy and Evelyn Rinke, put on suits and went swimming. Taggart, Diane, and Charley Rinke didn’t participate. They sat together on the terrace and drank Planter’s Punch and Salty Dogs. Diane’s face was as bland as ever. She paid no attention to Taggart. Now and then he would look at her over his lifted glass, a hint of pleasure in his eyes. Rinke was sprawled on a chaise longue, as if his long hours in the hidden room in the garage had depleted him. The lines of his down-turned mouth were still sharp, though. He looked as if he played lightly and skillfully with thoughts. Like juggled steel splinters, they could be potentially dangerous if he wasn’t careful with them. He seemed to be the sort of man who would be careful.

“I thought you liked swimming,” I said to Diane, on my way to the beach.

“Too choppy now,” she said with a disinterested smile. “I don’t like the feel of salt water in my throat.” She was wearing shorts and another of those colorful half-sleeve shirts, this one of lime green. I shook my head in answer to her offer of a drink, went on down to the beach.

Aimee had a pair of swim fins and a face mask and she and Macy were diving for shells about twenty feet from shore. For all his awkward weight, Macy was a good swimmer, but his lungs couldn’t stand all the work. In a few minutes he had to come out to rest, his face looking fatigued. Aimee scooted through the water gracefully, slanting deep with a kick of the wedge-shaped fins.

Evelyn Rinke sat at the edge of the water, where her feet were covered at each small rise of wave. Her hair was combed and she had put on some lipstick.

I kneeled beside her. “Feeling all right today?”

She nodded. “Um-hmm. Reasonably. The sun feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Have you been in the water yet?”

“No. It feels sort of cold. I don’t know if I’d like it. I haven’t been swimming in a long time. Most of the time I stay close to the house—”

I offered a hand to her. “Try it.”

She smiled faintly. “Well — ” Her hard fingers closed about my hand. “All right. I think I will.” We went into the water together. She gasped in dismay. “Oh, Pete!”

“Plunge in. You’ll get used to it.” She splashed me as she put her arms together and dived down. I followed her. She swam uncertainly at first, then more strongly. Aimee treaded water nearby, watching us.

“Not so bad, is it?” I said, gliding up to Evelyn. She smiled broadly, her face streaming. “It’s awfully cold,” she said, “but I like it.” She lunged toward me suddenly, reached out and pushed my head under. I went deeper in the pale green water, grasped her ankles, tugged her toward the bottom. Her hair waved loosely behind her, a bubble or two escaping from her lips. She made a grab for me but I twisted out of the way. She went above water for air.

“Not fair,” she complained, laughing. “I’m not used to the exercise.” She floated on her back for a few minutes, eyes closed, face relaxed.

Aimee’s head bobbed up close by. She lifted the face mask. “Want to look for seashells?” she said timidly. So we looked for seashells. After a while Evelyn joined us. We crawled along close to the bottom, fingers searching the sand until it became impossible to see and we had to surface and wait for the water to clear. Once Aimee saw a small fish and sprinted after it, turning quickly in the water as she tried to duplicate the delicate fin-flip of the silvered fish.

We had been in the water about an hour when Macy bellowed, “Aimee! Diane says you better come in now.” We all went in. Evelyn walked closed beside me as we waded ashore, bumping against me when her feet slipped on the uneven sand bottom. Then she stopped and held my wrist so I would have to stop too.

“Pete,” she said, “I really had fun. For the first time in a long time. I didn’t know anything could be fun any more.”

I smiled at her. “Give yourself a chance once in a while.”

She shuddered, putting her arms across her breasts. There was a stiff breeze and it was chilly after coming out of the water. “Here?” she said, looking toward the house, where her husband loafed on the chaise longue. A little of the old pain seemed to be returning to her. “Anyway, for a little while it was nice. Thanks, Pete. I guess I’ll try to get a nap now.” She walked on a few steps, feet splashing in the shallow water. Then she turned and looked at me again, not saying anything. I caught up with her and we walked to the house together, past the drinking set on the patio.

It was a quarter of five when I had showered and dressed. I was hungry and since I wouldn’t be around for dinner I went into the kitchen and one of the boys fixed a steak from the freezer for me. After I had eaten I went upstairs, hoping to find Macy in his room. He wasn’t there. I started down the hall, then stopped, hearing a peculiar sound from the Rinkes’s bedroom. I waited for it to be repeated, then walked closer to the opened door. It had sounded like a voiceless person trying to scream.

I heard Rinke talking softly as I approached. While he talked the sound went on, relentlessly. I looked through the space between the door and frame. The first thing I saw was Evelyn Rinke’s face. It was chalky. She sat as if her bones were glass. Her eyes were squinted almost shut. Her mouth was twisted open, frozen in the scream that was like a sawing of metal from her throat.

Charley Rinke was holding a cigarette lighter about four inches from her face. He moved it very slowly as he spoke to her in his low calm voice. Her eyes watched the flame, blank with fright.

“I know you’re afraid of it, Evelyn,” he said smoothly. “I’ll take it away in just a moment. I know how you feel about being burned. This time I won’t burn you. But I want you to understand this. Stay away from Pete Mallory. Hear me? I saw the two of you playing in the water today. You have a good time with him, don’t you? But stay away from him. I know what you’re building up to with Mallory. Just remember who you are. You’re Mrs. Rinke. You’re my wife. You belong in my bed, not anybody else’s you happen to take a shine to.”

In a moment of explosive anger I wanted to walk into that I room, feel his face smash and spread under my fists. Evelyn Rinke put her hands up, holding them out in front of her in a gesture of supplication.

“Take... take... take...” she pleaded.

Rinke thumbed the top down on the lighter and the little torch of flame was gone. He started out so quickly I had time only to retreat and duck into the adjoining room. I heard him walk rapidly away and go down the hall.

Evelyn Rinke was seated in the same position, hands over her face, when I went into her bedroom. She must have heard me come in.

“Go away,” she said. “Go away.”

“It’s me — Pete.”

Without any apparent movement she began to fall sideways out of the chair. I caught her and lifted her to the bed.

“Why did he do that?” I said.

Her teeth were tightly clenched. “He... can’t stand to see me have fun. Not with somebody else.”

“Why are you so afraid of fire?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Fire?”

“You were almost paralyzed looking at that lighter.”

“I don’t know why. The flame just makes me freeze up. I’ve always been that way.”

I looked at her for a few moments longer. The terror was still in her eyes. She touched one of my hands. “Stay with me, Pete.”

“It would be better if I didn’t,” I said. “If he came back I might kill him.”

I turned and walked from the room. I went downstairs, my chest tight and squeezed with anger. I walked out of the house, toward the trees that capped the north end of the island, not caring where I was going, just needing to walk until the dangerous edge of hatred for Charley Rinke had blunted.

The sun was fading behind long streaks of clouds in the west. In the grove of palms I found Diane sitting on a couple of thin pillows, her back against the thickened base of one of the trees. There was a book face down in her lap and she looked steadily across the milky bay.

I stopped near her, putting out a hand to the tree. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look up.

“Where’s Aimee?” I said, to jar her loose from her attitude of concentration.

“Lying down before dinner,” Diane said without moving. “What’s wrong, Pete?”

“Why would anything be wrong?”

“I could tell by the way you were walking. The quick way you breathe.” She looked up then. “Are you going into town?”

“Soon.”

Diane sighed. She got up from the pillows stiffly. “Too dark to read,” she said. “I guess I’ll go now.” She looked toward the bay again. “It’s really beautiful here. I like to come here and just sit. Get away from things that aren’t so beautiful.” She looked a bit wistful. “I guess it won’t be long before we leave this house for good.”

“What makes you think so?” I said.

“It’s — just a feeling I have.”

“What will you do then?”

“I’ll go where Aimee goes, I suppose,” she said carelessly. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“You like the kind of life you’ve got here?” I asked her. “You like the people you live with?”

She looked away, bent to pick up the pillows. “I think we are in rats’ alley,” she said almost inaudibly, “where the dead men lost their bones.”

The odd line jostled memory, and I looked at her thoughtfully. “Where did you get that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve known it for years. I’ve always liked that poem, because he seemed to write it for me. I’m the girl who looks in the mirror and wonders what difference it made.”

I wanted to hear her say more, but she was suddenly silent, as if she had revealed too much of the self that she usually kept carefully wrapped and put away from the curiosity of strangers.

I took the pillows from her, stacked them under my arm. We walked back to the house together, saying nothing. Her jaw was set, and there was a melancholy look in her eyes, as if she were reaching back to another time that had held more promise than now. At the patio I left her and went to the garage, picked out a car for the drive into town.

Chapter Twenty

At seven o’clock I placed the call. I listened to the drone as it rang for a long time at the other end. Then she answered. “Yes?”

“You told me to call,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Do you know where Railroad Avenue is?”

“I can find it.”

“Get in touch with a man called Harry Small at Nineteen Railroad Avenue.”

“Why?”

“He raised Carla Kennedy,” she said. “He knows where she is now.” The connection was broken with a hollow click.

I wrote the address down, left the Coral Gardens Hotel. In the car I unfolded my city map and found Railroad Avenue. It was a two-block street that ran diagonally into the Seaboard’s Moreland Yards, not far from the bay.

I found the street without much trouble. It was hardly wider than a driveway, lined with gray, tottering rooming houses, narrow brick buildings. I parked near the entrance to Railroad Avenue, beside a littered embankment next to the railroad property. A long diesel freight pounded by on the outside track as I got out of the Buick.

Number Nineteen was half a block from the glittering bands of tracks. I picked out the number lettered above the door in the light of a lamppost on the corner. It was a deserted store of some kind. The windows had been painted over, and there was a large rusted padlock on the door. It probably hadn’t been opened in years. Somebody had scratched a ludicrous face in the scaly paint near the keyhole.

I wasn’t amused. I had bought myself twenty bucks worth of nothing. I looked up and down the dark street. Lights burned here and there in the high windows, but there were no faces, no people to share the ledge of sidewalk with me. I walked past the store slowly, stopped. There was a crevice between two buildings, barely four feet wide. A dozen steps down this brick canyon a small yellow light glowed feebly, making long groping shadows. There was a door beneath the light.

I listened to the sound of boxcars clanking together in the freight yard, the deep chuff of an old locomotive. I walked down the alley, my feet rattling the trash. A furry shadow raced from a small paper box ahead of me, darted into blackness beyond the reach of the light.

No one answered my knock. I looked down at the brass doorknob. It gleamed dully. No rust. I touched it. My fingertip came away clean.

I put my hand around the knob, turned it slowly. The latch clicked, the door was free of the jamb. I pushed it open.

Inside, it was stifling. The one window was shut, shade pulled over it. The only light came from a battered metal table lamp in the center of the room. A man sat upright in a wheelchair beside the table. He was a short man with a bald head, powerful arm and shoulder muscles. His hands dangled at the spokes of the big wheels. He wore a T shirt, gray pants, suspenders. His face was yellow and dry, the eyes half open and slightly protruding. His parted lips twisted convulsively. He leered at me. It was nothing personal. He would leer at anybody who came through that door, even the cops who would have found him sooner or later, if I hadn’t come first.

I walked closer to him, trying to smell death in the hot room. But he hadn’t been dead that long. I found out what was holding him up so stiffly. A knife had been thrust through the canvas back of the wheelchair, getting him just to the side of the left shoulderblade. From the size of the handle I judged it was a pretty large knife. The blade was aimed slightly downward. It had probably got the heart or one of the important arteries nearby. He would be a big sack of blood. A little of it had run down his T shirt in back, dried darkly.

It would have required a husky man to stab him like that, through the thick muscles developed from years of self-locomotion in the wheelchair. The tread on the rubber-capped wheels was almost worn away.

A stock of up-to-date newspapers and magazines with the front covers missing suggested he probably made his living as a newsdealer. His room needed a good cleaning. He didn’t have enough shelf space for all his books. They were piled on the windowsill, on the floor, under a bunk bed. There was one on the table near the wheelchair, opened at about the middle. I glanced at the cover. It was a collection of poems by Robert Browning.

Next to the Browning reader was a telephone, and a small notepad was stuck halfway under the base of the phone. I pulled it out, looked through it. It wasn’t new, but there was only one notation in the little book, a Bay-view phone number. I picked up the receiver of the phone, dialed. There were six rings, then a sound as if someone had cut in.

“Stan’s Restaurant,” a female voice said cheerfully.

I hung up, looked at the number again. I tore the page out of the notebook and shoved it back beneath the telephone. Apparently Harry Small had had Stan’s private phone number at the restaurant. They cut in from somewhere else when he didn’t answer.

Listening to the echo of my own thoughts in the silent room was making me nervous. Perspiration soaked my face. For a moment I almost envied him his dry skin.

I walked around the table and my foot kicked a piece of broken porcelain. I looked down and saw a little glazed figure, a Napoleonic soldier standing stiffly at attention. His feet and rifle were broken and there was a long crack down his face to the white cross-chest cartridge belt. I wrapped him in my handkerchief, not taking time to look for the missing feet, and put the broken doll in my coat pocket.

It was almost impossible to find anything in the cluttered room, but I gave it a try, looking in the most likely places for pictures. I found none. No faded snapshots of little Carla Kennedy. No trace of the girl at all. And Harry Small was supposed to have raised her.

I was ready to go. I had stayed too long already. But I went to the phone and dialed another number, the number the old woman had given me. It rang again and again. I waited for her to answer, but she never came. I hung up and wiped the phone with a towel from the sink. I thought about turning off the light above the door and leaving through the alley that led to the rear of the building. But I was liable to blunder into more trouble if I didn’t go out the way I had come. I left Harry Small, smearing the doorknob with the palm of my hand as I went out. As far as I could tell, no curious eyes tracked my progress down Railroad Avenue to where the Buick was parked.

Chapter Twenty-one

At a quarter after eight I parked the Buick in a metered rectangle on Kelvin Boulevard, walked half a block to Monessen. Down at the other end of the street, near the apartment house where Victor Clare had lived, children gathered under a streetlight. This end of Monessen was deserted.

There were no lights in the grim brick fortress of the used-furniture store. I cupped my hands against the glass plate in the door, looked inside. It took me a few seconds to notice the splinter of light between the curtains at the rear. I watched it, reached out with my fist and knocked loudly. Nothing happened. I knocked again. The light went out suddenly.

I thought about that. Then I turned and walked across the street, stood partially behind a leaning tree to see if anyone ventured out. I waited for what seemed a long time. I decided it wasn’t worth it, but I stayed there anyway. Then I saw the tip of a cigarette glow in an alley next to the store. Nothing else. Just the cigarette to tell me I wasn’t the only one who waited.

In another minute or two, the cigarette was flipped away, toward the sidewalk. I kept my eyes on that alley. I counted the steps he might be taking. Then there was a crack of misty pale light along the side of the furniture store as a door was opened. I thought I saw someone go inside, but I wasn’t sure. It was quite a distance. The light vanished as the door was shut.

I yawned to lessen springlike tension, put a hand inside my coat to loosen the automatic that rode in the shoulder holster there. I crossed the street casually, my shoes popping the crisp little asphalt bubbles raised by the heat of the sun that day. Down at the other end of the street the children played in the circular glow from the streetlight. A voice chanted, “Ten... twenty... thirty...” and there was a quick scuffle as figures fled to favorite hiding places. Soon there would be the long moments of breathless search, a yelp of discovery, a frenzied dash to the circle of light. Home free.

I walked into the alley.

“Seventy... eighty...”

I pulled the heavy automatic from the holster, slid my fingertips along the smooth, faintly oily slide. I put my thumb on the rasp top of the hammer, eased it back. I walked very slowly. I lived a long time between each step. The noise of the children faded, belonging to another world beyond the mouth of the tar-black alley.

This was the world now. A world of silence where you shot fast and quick at a misstep, a fatally accidental sound ahead. Scrape of shoe against an unexpected break in the pavement. Tiny whispering of fabric against a brick wall.

I found the depression in the wall of brick where the door was. I stopped again. He might not have gone inside. Or there might be another one a dozen feet down the alley, waiting with a gun on the door, waiting for me to frame myself in the dusty light. If it was a shotgun it would tear me in half.

My fingers touched the knob of the door. It turned without any difficulty.

If someone were waiting for me, he’d be as nervous as I was, as tightly wound, looking for an excuse, any excuse, to blast away.

I put the automatic in the shoulder holster for a moment, peeled out of my coat. It would be a poor decoy. It might not work. But if it did, I had him like shooting pigeons in the park... That is, if anyone were waiting.

Holding the coat by the collar, I turned the knob all the way. I brought the automatic up in my other hand, steadying it against my stomach. I pulled the door open, flung the coat high into the entrance so that it flared open, sleeves flopping.

Nothing happened. The coat landed inside with a muted plop. I went through the doorway quickly, rolled past the jamb and against the wall inside. Light came from a single unshaded bulb hanging on a frayed cord from the ceiling. There was no one here, either. There were many crates inside, pieces of broken furniture. Enough dust to shovel out.

And freshly made footprints in the dust on the floor. About a size-nine shoe. Not a very big guy. The tracks stopped at another door across from me. This door was open about two inches and there was more light in the room beyond. And voices.

I eased the alley door shut, picked up my coat and put it on.

I followed his steps to the other door. Only one person was talking. He spoke with a soft drawl. He talked almost incessantly, and there were overtones by a woman. She didn’t speak. She moaned in terror and pain. The speaker didn’t seem to mind this. He talked on. I moved very close to the door and stopped. I could see inside. It was the room where the woman modeled her figures. The fan was still on. I could hear it, above the frightened sobbing, the tough persuasive drawl.

The drawl went like this:

“Mothah, did you tell him wheah Cahla Kennedy is? Did you, mothah?”

“He... went to Harry Small. Harry... told...”

“No, mothah. Harry Small didn’t tell him nothin’. He couldn’t, because Harry Small is dead.”

I couldn’t tell where the man was standing in the room. The soft flowing voice was confusing, and acoustics were bad. It was Winkie Gilmer, of course. It had to be Winkie Gilmer. I felt very grateful that it was Winkie Gilmer.

“I want to know what you told him, mothah. Befo’ I open up that othah cheek fo’ you.”

I kicked the door wide open and stepped into the room, knowing instantly that I had been suckered good, that Winkie Gilmer had been expecting me, had led me on with the drawling voice as he waited for me to come inside. I knew he was very close to me even as something chopped down on my wrist and the automatic jumped out of my hand. I felt as if I had grabbed a live wire. I did the only thing I could. I fell away from the direction of the blow and part of my flaring coat was ripped cleanly and noiselessly by the slicing blade.

I didn’t go down but was wedged awkwardly between an old dresser and a defeated easy chair. I got my eyes on Gilmer then. He recovered with cat-quickness, brought the blade lower with a flourish, moved in on me with a little crouching step. I had to watch the blade. It was honed sharp, thin, about six inches long. Everything was happening in split seconds. I knew the futility of trying to squirm loose from the grip of the furniture. I kicked up and out hard, trying to get his elbow with the toe of my shoe. It missed, skidded off his forearm, but knocked the arm up and threw him off stride for a second. I sprawled backwards, my shoulders against the floor, head tilted against the wall, legs sticking up and out, one of them bent over an arm of the sagging easy chair. I couldn’t have been more helpless.

But Gilmer had to wait another second, indecision in his eyes, before he could decide to lean across the chair, elude my legs and start the blade low, away from my arms, ripping out bowels and intestines and lungs with one jerking slash. It gave me a second to twist sideways, get one arm under the chair, one behind it, and throw all the muscles of my arms and shoulders into play as I lifted the chair, shoving it forward enough so that it tipped over into him just as he lunged, hitting him right above the knees. I followed the chair, shoving it like a football blocking sled, and Gilmer was carried forward a few feet, his body sprawled out.

Chair and Gilmer slammed into a shelf, and little modeled figures showered down. Gilmer had powerful legs. He was sitting on his rump at the base of the shelf but he kicked up, tearing the clumsy chair from my grasp, knocking it away from both of us. He scrambled up, his face reddening, his fist still holding tight to the knife. He was a stocky little fellow with a face like a college cheerleader. A pleasant-looking little man who wanted to slash my gut inside out.

I was just a little off balance. The human body is always off balance, unless you’re standing still with both feet planted. The ancient Tibetan monks who worked up the sciences of jiu-jitsu and bar-jitsu knew that. There are ways to fight a knife flashing at you, edge up. The bar-jitsu boys make it look easy. Two slaps with either hand. A nerve bitten at the base of the thumb, on the back of the hand. The knife jumps away, there is only a pain in the forearm. It was something to know. I wished I knew. I only knew to duck low, under the knife he held at belly level, shoving forward to knock him off balance so he couldn’t get the knife around and use it against my neck. I pushed him back and straightened up, taking my arms from around him, shoving his good right arm high so that he had to reverse it to make use of the blade. I got hold of the arm first and, when Gilmer’s reflexes stiffened it, used the arm like a lever to throw him halfway across the room. He sailed in a flat arc to the table where the woman had worked at her figures. He hit the table on his back and rebounded slightly so that when momentum carried him to the edge of the table he was almost sitting up. He went off the table and sprawled face first into another shelf of figures. He got one arm up to ease the impact. The little dolls jumped from the shelves, popping against the concrete floor.

Winkie spun away. He wasn’t holding the knife. His other arm, the one that wasn’t in front of his face, lashed out and cleared a shelf of bottles. He would have fallen but his fingers gripped the edge of the shelf, and he held himself up. A broken jug of something that looked like linseed oil was emptying down over his face and the front of his shirt. He turned, one hand closing on the neck of the broken bottle as I hopped across the table after him. I was going to go into him with my fists but changed my mind in mid-air and hit him with both feet together, right above the belt. The broken bottle went spinning. Winkie’s legs shot out from under him. His hands broke his fall.

Gilmer crawled to his knees. I had hit the floor after kicking him, and one of my elbows was numb. I was afraid it was broken. I turned on the floor to defend myself if he came after me. It would be a poor job with one arm. But Gilmer apparently didn’t know I was hurt. He looked away from me quickly, his face wrinkling with alarm. I glanced under the table and saw the woman on her hands and knees near the door, picking up my automatic. I hadn’t paid any attention to her until now. I saw blood dripping slowly from her face. The gun was all set to go off — when she found something to shoot at.

Winkie’s eyes settled on a window. He went for it, picking up a chair along the way. In the time it took me to get on my feet he smashed out the window and went through it, feet first.

I followed him without bothering to retrieve my gun. He was a fleet shadow running through back yards a hundred feet from me. A fence in his way gave me a chance to narrow the distance. He looked behind him. He didn’t have a knife, didn’t have a gun. I was bigger than he was. Gilmer must have been unhappy. He ran the length of the fence, stumbled into an alley. He ran hard, waving his arms, legs working furiously. I ran more smoothly, with long strides, not using so much energy. Fear pushed him on. He stayed thirty paces ahead of me. Fences kept him in the alley.

Gilmer angled across the first street that intersected the alley, heading for the square skeleton of a four-story building under construction. There were stacks of concrete blocks and lumber lying around. I sprinted harder, closing in on him. He stumbled, struggled across a mound of sawdust. I avoided the pile. His flight carried him inside the building. The supports and floors had been poured, and three of the ground-floor walls were blocked in. Winkie stopped, seeing he had trapped himself, then went up a ladder to the second floor. There were no stairs yet. I followed him. I heard him breathing hoarsely above me. He was only three rungs ahead of me.

He didn’t stop on the second floor but continued upward. There was no place for him to hide on the third floor, either. Both of us were tiring, our speed of climb slowing. My lungs were bound with hot wires. We hit the last ladder. Winkie slipped once, hung by his hands. I came close enough to reach out for his foot. He pulled the leg up, scrambled up the remaining rungs. He was making shrill sounds of anxiety now.

On the top floor his hands found a length of pipe as he crawled away from the ladder opening. I saw him turn with it as I pulled myself up. There was flickering light somewhere and I saw the happy look in his eyes as he swung around, lifted the piece of pipe high.

“Now you gonna get it,” he breathed. I got my knees over the edge of the opening, put an arm up. The blow knocked me flat on my back. If the pipe had connected with my forearm, the bone would have been shattered. Bunched muscles in my upper arm caught the blow. He lunged after me, intent on smashing my head with the pipe. I rolled quickly. There was an oily smell close by. I saw Gilmer hovering above me, his face and hair covered with sweat and linseed oil. It dripped off his chin. Sawdust clung to the oil.

My groping hand found the source of the smoke and the flickering light. My fingers scratched at hardening concrete. I kept my eyes on Winkie. The pipe was swinging backward. He was being careful to nail my head, alert for any evasive movement. I picked up the round flaming pot of kerosene that had been left to warn prowlers away from the drying patch of cement, flung it at him with a sweeping movement of my arm. I aimed for his chest. The little black pot bounced away, but the lick of flame had touched the linseed oil-soaked clothing and a bright flaring torch framed Winkie’s surprised face for just a second before the fist of flame closed around it and charred the stubble of hair on his head, seared the flesh, blinded him. He screamed. His hands let go the pipe and he clawed at his burning face. He stumbled back three steps, shrieking wildly as the flames ate away all expression, staining the air with the scorch of flesh.

Then, surprisingly, Winkie was gone. I crawled to the edge of the rectangular opening in the floor where the stairs would eventually go, and saw him hit the sand floor four stories below. He landed on his back. The fire on his chest and head flared brighter for an instant, then steadily and quietly burned away his clothing.

There was a little pile of sand close by. I shoveled some of it into the opening with my hands and it hissed downward to shower over the burning body. After enough of it had fallen the flames were extinguished.

I went down the ladders with great care, every muscle trembling. I had to stop and rest on every floor. On the ground floor I glanced quickly at the gunman. Half of him was charred. The fall had probably killed him anyway. The stench was nauseating. I felt a touch of regret that he was dead. Now there would be no answers for my questions.

I got out of there, walked back to the furniture store through the alley, climbed in through the shattered window. I stopped with one foot inside. She was sitting at the table, holding the gun in both fat hands. There was a maniacal look in her eyes. Her once carefully waved hair stuck out all over her head. Each breath she took sounded like a retch. There was a long gash on one of her cheeks, cutting deep through the fat to the solid cheekbone. Blood from it was smeared on her face and hands.

“Easy,” I said, not moving. I couldn’t be sure she knew me.

“Where is he?” she said in a hard voice.

“Back there.” I nodded over one shoulder.

“You killed him?”

“He’s dead.”

Her fingers unclenched and the gun thudded on the table. I brought my other leg through the window.

“You see what he did to me,” she said. “Oh, the dirty bastard. He cut me. He didn’t need to do that. He didn’t have to.”

“You want a doctor?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“In a minute you can have a doctor. First you talk to me. Where’s Carla Kennedy?”

She fumbled for a handkerchief in her pocket, applied it gently to the cut. The bleeding had almost stopped. “I told you. I told you where to find her.”

“All I found was Harry Small. Dead. Somebody knifed him, somebody who probably knew him, or somebody he was expecting. I looked around his place. There wasn’t any trace of the girl.”

“Then — she took everything away.”

“You don’t know where I could find her?”

“No. I told you.”

“This Gilmer. What did he say to you?”

“He wanted... to know what I told you. How did he find out I said anything to you?”

“I’m afraid quite a few people knew I was here. Did Gilmer talk or act like he’d killed Harry Small?”

“No. He just said Harry was dead.”

“What did this Harry Small do for a living?”

“Newsstand. Up on Rosamorada, near the Strip. Used to sell papers on a corner downtown. Got his newsstand a couple of years ago.”

“Do you know anything at all about Carla Kennedy that would help me? I’ve got to find her.”

“I don’t know anything. I just knew Harry took her in. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

I remembered something in my coat pocket, took it out. The little soldier was busted to a fair-thee-well now inside the folds of handkerchief. I unwrapped the pieces, scattered them before her eyes. She touched them fondly. One of her children had come home.

“I found it in Harry Small’s room.”

“It’s one of mine.” She looked up at me. “I made two of them, though. Just alike.”

“Two? What happened to the other one?”

“Harry had both.” I thought back, trying to remember another little figure in the room. Unless it had been hidden for some reason, there wasn’t one.

“The girl must have the other one,” she said, reading my eyes. She groaned. “Please. Call me a doctor.”

“All right. Look. There’s going to be Law all over this neighborhood when they find Gilmer’s body. Questions asked. People will remember us running through their yards, through the alley. The cops will want to know about that busted window, how you got that cut on your cheek. It would be better if you don’t tell them anything. There’s another one like Gilmer around, only worse. He’s killed quite a few people. He’ll kill you just for associating with me, if you don’t keep quiet.”

The quick terror that flashed in her eyes gave me my answer. I went toward a phone on the wall near the curtains. My foot kicked something. I bent down and picked up a sky blue hat with a white band. I sailed it at the table.

“You better burn this in your kiln, too,” I said. I made two phone calls, the first to the police, to tell them about Harry Small. The second was to a doctor whose name she gave me.

Chapter Twenty-two

Reavis was working the gatehouse when I drove back to the island. He came up to the car as soon as I was through the gate.

“We got company,” he said, putting a hand on the window frame. “Maxine and three of his outfit. Also that girl he shacks up with.”

I nodded, drove on up the hill. Maxine’s car, a gleaming black Lincoln, was in the way so I couldn’t get into the garage. I left the Buick in the drive, started to go inside.

“Mallory,” a voice said. I turned from the door and waited. Charley Rinke hurried across the front lawn to me.

“They’re here,” he whispered, when he thought he was close enough.

“I know it,” I said shortly.

He smoked nervously. “Mallory — Pete, this is our chance. The big chance for both of us. Macy is through. But the organization hasn’t completely deteriorated yet. All that’s necessary is for somebody to step in and take control. Two men could do it. You and I. I know the books. You’ve got the contacts. You could round up the men. In a few days we could smash any resistance. There wouldn’t be much, if Maxine was dead.”

I turned away from him. His hand caught my arm. “Wait. Wait, Pete.” His voice was strained. “Listen to me. I’ve worked it all out. We can do it. Think about it, Pete. You saw the money in the safe. There’re millions more, just waiting for us to step in and take them.”

“Let go of me,” I said.

His hand dropped away. “What’s the matter? I — I thought—”

“I don’t know what you thought,” I told him. “I don’t know what kind of plans you made. But you better forget ’em, Rinke. You haven’t got any idea what you’d be starting. With Maxine dead and Macy out of control this territory would be wide open. Every out-of-work Syndicate hood from Seattle to Newark would be down here on the first train. I couldn’t hold this area with a battalion of Marines. It takes time to hire good men. You can’t use any two-bit leadslinger who has a gun and is willing to work. You got to have some smart heads under you to try a play like that. Meanwhile your life wouldn’t be safe from one second to the next. I don’t know why I’m standing here explaining this to you. I ought to let you go ahead and try to take Maxine on your own. If you have the guts. I don’t think you do. Your bright idea is for me to pick up the lead while you scratch around in the account books and sit back and enjoy the idea of being the local crime king. You wouldn’t live a week. And when you died you’d die messy and scared.”

He stared at me, his thin lips apart. There was an expression of childlike frustration on his face.

“I’ve got some advice for you,” I said. “As soon as Maxine takes over you pack your tail up and get out of here. Go as far away as you can. Maybe change your name. You know too much to be hanging around town after Maxine is top man. He might get nervous about you after a while and tell somebody to chill you. Why don’t you get an honest job somewhere and give your wife a break for a change?” It exhausted me, saying so much to him.

He sneered at me. “I can handle Evelyn all right,” he said.

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “Get away from me, Rinke, before I just sort of lean over and pound the hell out of you. It would probably do you good.”

Rinke backed away from me hastily. “I thought you were smart. I thought I could talk to you.”

“You can’t talk to me,” I said. “You don’t have any words that interest me. All I’m interested in right now is getting a thousand miles away from this place.”

I moved toward him and shoved him, hard. He almost fell. He backed away from me again. I didn’t have to do that. There was no reason for me to do that. I turned away and walked into the house, wearily. I held my hands a little out in front of me as if I had smeared them with something dirty. I was tired of myself, of trying to be tough. I wasn’t tough. I wasn’t one of the hired apes who could smash somebody’s face or put a bullet in somebody without feeling a twinge. I was conditioned to toughness, that’s all. I was used to sudden violence and I knew how to take care of myself. But once in a while the guard came down and I started shaking. The only really tough men are the hefty lads with the sixty-plus IQ’s who don’t have the reasoning abilities of a flea, who can’t see it happening to them someday. Who don’t give a damn anyway.

In the brightly lighted living room, Gerry sat all by herself at the small curved bar sipping some kind of pale blockbuster from a tall etched glass. She wore a gray skirt and full-sleeved blouse with wide red stripes. Her skin was fresh as poured cream. She looked very young and very charming.

“Hello,” she said, edging sideways on the bar stool, her lips pursed around a straw. “What happened to you?”

I glanced down at my clothes. I looked as though I had just been dug out of a cave-in. My hands were trembling. One palm was scraped. The arm that had been slugged with a pipe ached. I had trouble lifting it more than a few inches. I took out a handkerchief and put it to my face. It came away streaked with dirt. Mallory, home from the wars to count his medals.

“What are you drinking?” I said. “Ginger ale?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s some kind of rum thing. Stan showed me how to fix it. Do you want me to fix one for you?”

“Don’t bother. One swallow would lay me out like a mortician’s helper.” I sat down in a chair of curved tubed aluminum. “Where’s the gang?”

“They’re all somewhere else talking business,” Gerry said. “At least, Stan and Macy are.” She drank the rest of the rum thing and put the glass up. “You haven’t seen Owen around, have you?”

“Honey, I just got here.” I had a thought. The tired wheels notched together as they turned. “Maybe you shouldn’t see Owen while you’re here,” I said patiently. “You wouldn’t want trouble to start, would you?”

She giggled. She reached for a square bottle of rum nearby, sniffed at it, dropped some over the ice in her glass. The giggle was a hint that she and the rum had been companions a bit too long.

“No, I wouldn’t start any trouble,” she said. “I used to live here. You didn’t know that, did you? Macy used to think a lot of me, before that kid came along.” For an instant there was a trace of bitterness in her eyes. “Good old Macy,” she said ironically. Gerry turned slightly on the stool. “Even if I went to see Owen,” she said, “Stan wouldn’t send me away. He’s always telling me that he can’t live without me.”

I sat there trying to work up enough energy to leave the chair.

She smacked her lips over the rum. “Not,” she said mysteriously, “that he’s going to live long anyway.”

“Huh?”

She giggled again. “Shouldn’t tell you.” A stray bit of hair swooped across her forehead, giving her a roguish look. She smiled, the glass at her lips. Her teeth clinked against it.

“What shouldn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged indifferently. “Oh. That Stan goes to the doctor all the time. Sometimes he goes three times a week. He should have an operation but I think he’s afraid to. He takes these pills. Phen — pheno—”

“Phenobarbital?”

“I guess that’s it. Some nights he lies awake in bed and groans.” She put her lips against the glass again, kissing it. The flesh of her underlip looked soft and hot. She was a potent piece. I could understand some of Stan’s attachment to her.

“It gets to be terrible,” she said moodily. “I can’t sleep.” Her eyes were dreamily thoughtful. “I think,” she said, “that some night I’m not going to be there when he comes home.”

I looked at her. “You mean you’d walk out on him?”

“That’s right.” Her head bobbed enthusiastically. “Leave. Time for Gerry to move on. There’s this man I met. He’s a count or something like that. I met him once when Stan took me to Boca Raton. He’s very nice. He wanted me to come with him then. But I told him I’d have to think about it.”

She put the glass down with a flourish, slid off the stool. She stretched, rising to her toes. The skirt fitted the curve of her legs. “Now I’ve thought about it,” she said lazily, giving me a sidelong look. She kicked her shoes off. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

“You’re a darling,” I said. “Queen of the junior prom. All the beanie-wearers are mad for you.”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

I turned my head. “No, it isn’t, is it? I’ll have to go work up new gags. I think I’ll take a hot bath while I’m at it. I think I’ll run the water to the top of my upper lip and then make little waves. It should take me a long time to drown like that, shouldn’t it?”

She looked at me solemnly, then her lower lip dropped and she laughed. “You’re crazy,” she said.

I got out of the chair. “Around here,” I said, “that’s a virtue.” I walked out of the living room toward my room in the back wing. On the way I saw three of Maxine’s boys playing poker in the television room. The Irish boy was one of them. He looked as if he were wearing an eggplant under his nose.

I stuck my head in the door. “Well,” I said, “if it isn’t Bushy, Bagot, and Green. And how is the king tonight?” Three jaws dropped. The one who was dealing threw a card wild and it fluttered to the floor.

“Gi da hell ow uh here,” Irish said through stiff lips. His jaw looked sore. I went down the hall to my room, dragging my feet as if I had a tombstone tied to my back.

Chapter Twenty-three

I had taken a long bath and worked on my sore arm with some kind of rubbing compound and was about to get into bed when the door was nudged open behind me. I looked over one shoulder. There was a face in the doorway, about four feet from the floor. Serious brown eyes studied me.

“Hello, Aimee,” I said.

The door inched open a little more. She was wearing blue pajamas and slippers with fur tops. Her straight black hair was brushed until it gleamed.

“I was lookin’ for Diane,” she said timorously.

“What makes you think she’d be here?” I asked her.

Aimee shrugged and crept into the room, her eyes peering around. Maybe she was lonely. She stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me.

“Diane’s not upstairs, is that it?”

She shook her head. “No. She went out when she thought I was ’sleep.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No.” She turned around and lifted her bottom to the edge of the bed, sat there, her hands folded. “She went to the garage.”

“How would you know?”

She looked at me secretively. “ž’Cause I followed her.”

“What did she want in the garage?”

Aimee shook her head again. “She didn’t go in.” She scratched at her nose, thinking about it. “She went to one of those cars. A black one. She took a package out of it.”

“A package? What kind of package?”

She held her hands about a foot apart, showing me. “Like this. I didn’t pay much attention. I went back upstairs and went to bed before Diane came back.”

“Then she went to bed, too,” I said encouragingly.

“No. She got her swimmin’ suit and put it on. She went downstairs in her swimmin’ suit with the package. I think it was a box or somethin’.”

“How long ago was that?”

Aimee shook her head. “I don’t know.” She sat very quietly then, hands folded, not looking at me. I glanced at my watch. It was twenty after twelve.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Aimee said suddenly.

“Yes.”

Aimee sighed. “If you didn’t have a girlfriend, you could marry Diane, couldn’t you?”

I frowned inconspicuously. “Well — not quite—”

“Diane should marry somebody,” Aimee said worriedly. “Don’t you like her?”

“In a way,” I said.

“I guess Diane could marry Daddy,” Aimee said. “But she don’t — doesn’t want to. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like Daddy.” She put her legs up on the bed and crossed them. “Diane’s pretty,” she said coaxingly. “I know she likes you, too. She said so. And she’s not really as bad as she acts. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“You mean when she acts funny sometimes.”

“No. Diane doesn’t act funny. I mean not crazy. I’m talkin’ about — ” Her eyes seemed to become flat, suddenly blank. “But she said I couldn’t ever say anything about that.”

“About what?”

But Aimee wasn’t talking. Her lips pressed tightly together. “Not ever,” she said resolutely.

“Okay,” I said. “Don’t you think you ought to go back to your own room?”

“I don’t want to if Diane isn’t there.”

“If she just went for a swim she’ll be in before long. You could get into bed and leave the light on for her.”

Aimee’s eyes shied about the room. “Could I stay here a little while?”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea. I was just going to bed myself.”

Aimee hesitated a few moments, then slid off the bed.

“I’ll walk you upstairs,” I said. I took her hand and we went upstairs together. I thought about Aimee. When she was with me in the room, there had been the softest touch of something reaching out from her, a gentle tendril searching for an anchoring place. There was something very fragile about her, obscurely appealing.

In her room she got primly into bed and thanked me. Then she said, “I didn’t bring teddy.”

“What?”

“My teddy,” she said with sleepy patience. “I must have dropped him downstairs in the hall.”

“I’ll get it,” I said. I went back downstairs and searched until I found the stuffed animal. I picked it up and returned to the room. As I entered I saw that the bathroom light was on and the door open. Aimee was asleep.

Diane appeared suddenly in the doorway of the bath, drying her breasts with a towel. When she saw me she froze momentarily. Then she said, “Pete?” I couldn’t see the expression in her eyes.

“Yeah,” I said drily. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was even better than I had imagined that first night on the beach. And with the bathroom light behind her there was nothing I couldn’t see.

She watched me silently for a moment, making no effort to conceal herself with the towel.

“Why don’t you come closer?” she said. She released the towel and kicked it away with one foot. She hadn’t moved, continued to face me squarely.

I walked toward her, tossing the teddy bear on her bed. I could see her eyes glistening now, the gleam of teeth behind parted lips.

As I reached out for her she switched off the light behind her, leaving us in darkness. Her hands caught my wrists, pulling me to her. She made love to me with lips, tongue, hard-tipped breasts, movements of her thighs, driving me to the verge of insanity. When she took her lips away from mine I tasted blood. There was a pressure inside me that had my ears ringing.

“All right,” I said, thickly, “let’s finish it.”

“It is finished,” she said almost dreamily. “That’s all, Pete. You can go now.” She released me and stepped back, shutting and locking the bathroom door before I got to her.

I said something under my breath, wanted to put my shoulder against the door and drag her out of there. But I remembered the sleeping child, and the nasty little scene Diane had made with Owen Barr. I took a deep breath and went back to my room. It was a long time before I could get to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-four

The drinking started early next day, and by two o’clock the patio was jammed with those taking after-lunch refreshment. When I came outside Owen Barr was hitting the stuff hard, or so it seemed. Maxine drank nothing. He lounged in the sun in a pair of plaid shorts, wearing the most pleasant expression he had in stock. Things were going smoothly for Stan. The first conference had evidently cleared the way. There would be other conferences with lawyers on each side, some outside help from the hierarchy. But Stan was on his way.

Gerry sat beside him, wearing a fetching bit of swim suit that wouldn’t have bandaged a sore thumb. She did Stan’s drinking for him and they held hands. Owen Barr kept away from her, but now and then looked bitterly in Maxine’s direction. When his glass was empty he held it out negligently and a houseboy would whisk it away and reinforce the ice with a jolt.

Charley Rinke and his wife played Canasta at a little table under a canopy of pink umbrella. Neither showed any interest in the game. Their fingers sorted the cards mechanically. Evelyn Rinke wore a big pair of sunglasses that masked any expression, but her complexion was sickly.

On the little dock that stuck out into the bay, Aimee, Diane and Macy waited while Rudy gassed up a sleek new speedboat. Rudy was wearing swimming trunks and seemed chipper, though he still limped painfully. Macy held tight to Aimee’s hand, probably not pleased at the prospect of bumping along the bay in the speedboat. Aimee was bundled in an orange lifejacket.

There was little conversation, either on the patio or on the dock. Even Aimee seemed to feel the undercurrent of tension, and chattered very little.

I shook my head at a tray of highballs offered by one of the help and walked toward the terrace. Taggart leaned against the rock wall surrounding the patio, wearing shorts and a T shirt over an impressive display of muscles. He glanced at me for a long moment when I went by.

On the patio behind me somebody lurched out of one of the chairs so that it skidded metallically on the paving. I looked back. Owen Barr closed in on me, grinning drunkenly. He had a half empty glass in one hand.

“Mal’ry,” he said slurringly. “Ol’ Pete Mal’ry. Ain’t you goin’ to have a drink, buddy?” He put a heavy arm around my shoulders as he caught up to me, leaned against me so I had to stop or let him fall.

“Here,” he said, extending the glass he held. “Y’take mine. Y’have my li’l drinky, Pete, an’ I’ll get another one.” He spoke loudly, breathing in my face. There wasn’t much of an alcoholic smell. I frowned.

He leaned his reddened face toward my ear, turned his face toward the bay. “I’ll be so terrible off-fended if you don’t have one drink with me, buddy.” In another voice, low and quiet, he said urgently, “I’ve got to talk to you, Pete. Later. I can’t say any more. I’m being watched. Come to my room.” He burst into rasping drunken laughter.

I pushed him away from me. “Watch what you’re doing,” I said. “You spilled some on me. Get the hell out of here. If I want a drink I’ll go get one.”

He looked injured. He stood holding the glass in a tilted position in the palm of his hand, and his mouth sagged foolishly. I looked quickly at the people on the patio. No one was paying any attention to us.

“Well, I was — jus’ tryin’ to be helpful. Tha’s all I was doin’, Pete.” He shrugged and weaved back to the patio, slumped in a chair, looked at nobody. I went on down to the dock.

Rudy had capped the big red gas can and set it on the dock. He climbed into the driver’s seat now, started the motor. Aimee jiggled on one foot and then the other, impatient to go. Diane watched without interest.

The motor missed a couple of times. Rudy kneaded the accelerator. The flesh on his white back trembled loosely as he turned the wheel experimentally. The motor idled. He looked back over his shoulder at us.

“Better let me run it out into the bay and get the kinks out,” he said to Macy. “She hasn’t been used for a long time.” Macy waved him away. He seemed preoccupied. Aimee looked up at him unhappily but said nothing.

Diane glanced at Macy. He told her to let go the lines.

“You might as well ride along,” she said.

“I’ll wait till Rudy loosens it up,” Macy said. “Untie him.”

Diane kneeled and freed the rope, tossed it into the stern of the speedboat. Rudy eased away from the dock, upping speed gradually.

“I’ll swing around and pick you all up in a minute,” he yelled back over his shoulder. The front of the speedboat bucked out of the water, kicked spray high. Two hundred feet from the dock Rudy began to lop. As he did so the gleaming speedboat blew apart without warning. There was a flat booming noise, a geyser of water mixed with splinters of the hull and the roll of dirty smoke. It happened with the quickness of a magician’s sleight-of-hand trick. While the pieces of boat rained into the water and the echo of the blast rolled across the bay we were shocked still. I thought I saw Rudy hurled from the wreckage but I wasn’t sure. I watched the boil of soapy foam at the spot where the boat had exploded. Then I went into the water, diving off the dock, seeing in passing the shocked sick face of Diane, hearing Aimee’s open-mouthed cry as she realized something had gone wrong but wasn’t quite sure how bad it was.

I came up swimming hard toward the debris bobbing in the ruffled water. I had little hope of finding Rudy but I didn’t think about it. I tried to save as much strength as I could for the return trip, but I swam badly, hampered by my stiff sore arm. Every stroke made the arm ache fiercely. I didn’t look up until I brushed past a piece of the boat skin. Then I stopped swimming and treaded water, searching for some sign of Rudy. Twenty yards out I caught a glimpse of his head, then his back as he rolled to the surface, hung motionless for an instant in the swell. His lungs must have been almost full of air when he went into the water.

I struck out quickly, dived when I reached the approximate spot where I had seen him. Ten feet down in the murky water I caught an arm and hauled him up, my lungs weighted and burning. I didn’t pause to see what kind of shape he was in. I put a hand under his chin, towed the bloated leaden body. I couldn’t see well. Salt stung my eyes. I sighted the dock, swam toward it. I went very slowly. The fingers that gripped Rudy’s chin were sticky with something. I didn’t dare waste time and strength looking at him.

When I thought I was going to have to let him go to save myself, a head bobbed up in front of me, a muscular arm reached for Rudy. It was Taggart.

“I’ll take him,” he said. I released the burden of Rudy gratefully, went for the dock with slow slapping strokes, my arm muscles trembling. My breath came in little flutters. Hands reached down at the dock to help me from the water. I lay on my back on the rough flooring, chest heaving, muscles jumping in my legs. I was too exhausted to move a finger. Dimly I heard shouted orders. Somebody told the women to get away from there. Somebody else said in an awed voice, “Jesus, will you look at that?” There was a muffled series of tired curses. I rolled over on my stomach, still gasping.

They were pulling Rudy over the edge of the dock — what was left of him. His mangled, mashed body had washed clean of blood. One arm and part of his head were gone. I saw ribs gleam from a gaping tear in his side, the armless side. The blast had got him along the right side of his body. I looked away from it, sat up on the dock. I glanced down at my hand, the one that had towed Rudy. There were clots of red between the fingers. I washed the hand hurriedly in the bay, leaning over the edge of the dock.

It was oddly quiet now. There were six men on the dock. Nobody said anything. Taggart sat with his arms around his legs, his face against his knees. He breathed explosively. The wet T shirt clung to him, showed the tanned skin underneath. There were specks of red on his T shirt.

I stood up, hoping my legs would hold me, staggered a step to remain upright. I saw the women clustered on the patio, looking at us. One of them — it seemed to be Evelyn Rinke — held Aimee in her arms.

Macy stood near the ruined body of Rudy — the last one, the last of the old gang. His shoulders were bunched. His fingers flexed like snakes maneuvering to strike. He looked at Rudy for a long time, his face frozen. His head edged up and he looked out at the bay. Then he turned on stiff awkward legs. He looked at each of us with bleak angry eyes.

“I was supposed to be in that boat, wasn’t I?” he said. His voice was little more than a frightened hiss. “Me and Aimee.” A sudden breeze fluttered his hair. There was dead silence for a moment. Macy raised an arm suddenly, threateningly.

“Get out!” he screamed. His voice was a slow curling lash that probably could be heard on the patio. “I want everybody out of here. Quick! Get off this island! Pack and get out!” His whole body shook from the force of his rage. Charley Rinke shuffled his feet nervously. Maxine’s men looked at Stan questioningly. Stan nodded his head toward the house, his mouth grim. From a quick look at him I thought that Rudy’s sudden death had shaken him as much as anyone. They edged off the dock, plodded toward the house. Owen Barr followed, tottering in the sand.

Taggart got up from where he had been sitting. His face betrayed no shock. “What do we do with him?” he said, speaking of Rudy.

“Bury him,” Macy said. “You and Pete and Reavis. Bury him. Then you get out too.” Macy shoved by us and walked off the dock, his eyes watery from grief that may or may not have had something to do with Rudy.

He hurried up the beach and terrace with thick-bodied haste. The little group of men and women on the patio scattered to let him through. He gestured violently at them. From far away, almost as if it came from a place behind the sun, I heard Aimee’s high cat wail.

Chapter Twenty-five

Reavis brought an old tarpaulin and two shovels from the garage, dumped them on the dock. There was a faint tremor in his lips as he looked at Rudy. The body didn’t bother him. He had seen bodies before. But he had always left them for someone else to bury.

Taggart and I folded the tarp once, laid it flat beside the corpse, rolled him onto it. We carried Rudy in the sling, Taggart going first, staggering a little in the sand. Reavis followed with the shovels. Occasionally they clanked together. The sun was gone and the sky was graying.

In the cove where I had seen Diane and Taggart two nights before, we put the tarp down and began to dig a dozen feet above high-tide line, at the base of a rocky spine of land. There was some wind now and fronds shook in the trees with a dry rustle. Nobody said anything. The only other sound was the chuff of shovels as we dug into loose sandy ground.

When we had a rough rectangular hole about four feet deep we stopped. Any deeper and it might begin to fill with water. We turned to the lumpy tarp and swung it into the new grave. I made sure the covering was tucked around Rudy’s remains. It seemed a small courtesy. Taggart leaned on his shovel and watched with flinty narrowed eyes. Reavis ran a hand through his hair and seemed anxious to leave.

“It don’t make any difference to him whether he’s covered or not,” Taggart said. “Let’s shovel him under and get out of here.”

“Ain’t we goin’ to say anything?” Reavis said.

Taggart turned his head. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. You usually say something when you bury somebody. I don’t know what you say. I ain’t no preacher.”

Taggart’s lips crooked. “He ain’t no preacher,” he said to me in a dry humorless voice. “You got any words that might save his soul?”

“If he ever had one,” I said, “I suppose he used it as a down payment on a bottle of whisky a long time ago.”

Taggart looked again at Reavis. “You got anything to say, go ahead.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say,” Reavis mumbled, as if he were embarrassed for having brought it up.

Taggart straightened. “Well, I have,” he said. He took up a shovel of dirt, rained it onto the canvas with a turn of his wrist. “So long, Rudy. You must have known it would happen to you some day.” He turned and flipped the shovel at Reavis. “You help Mallory cover him up. I’m goin’ back to the house.”

“You leavin’ right away?” Reavis said.

“No. Not right away. I’ll hang around a while.”

“Soon’s I get packed I’m goin’,” Reavis said. “There’s plenty of cars.”

“Don’t take the blue one parked by the gatehouse,” Taggart said as he walked up the slight slope. “That’s mine.” I watched him stride through the trees and disappear over the rise toward the house.

Reavis stepped forward with his shovel, dug it almost viciously into the pile of dirt. We worked hard for another five minutes, shoveling and scraping the fill over Rudy’s body, making a long mound. When we were through we looked at each other, then turned and walked away from the grave site.

“I’m glad I’m gettin’ out of here,” Reavis said. He looked sideways at me. “Somebody had to wire that boat,” he said, as if he had received a sudden vision.

“I know it.”

“I don’t want to hang around where I could maybe get it by accident,” he said.

When we reached the house Reavis walked on down to the gatehouse to pack. I saw Stan’s boys loading the trunk of his car with large boxes that might have held the files from the room in the garage. Maxine was dressed in a creamy-brown suit and his hair was combed neatly. He stood by the car with a snappy smile, supervising the loading process. When the trunk lid was closed he put out a hand to the door, glanced at the house. In another month he would probably have that, too. Gerry sat in the front seat and kept looking at him as if she were impatient to get rolling.

I couldn’t let Stan go without saying goodbye. I walked toward the low black Lincoln and called to him. His boys had wedged themselves into the back seat and Stan had the door on his side open. He turned to me and the smile changed a little bit and became a confident smirk.

“I guess you heard,” he said. “I’ve taken over now.”

“Congratulations,” I said. Gerry was staring at me from inside the car and I waved casually to her. “How’s the Count?” I asked her. She averted her face carefully.

I put out a hand to Maxine. He reached for it, but I slid the hand past his, tapped him in the stomach. He faded back against the car, bending a little, a warning of pain in his face. His poise cracked some.

“Have you asked the doctor how much longer you’re going to last?” I asked him.

He glared at me.

“Or are you afraid to?” I said.

“Get away from me,” he said venomously.

I gave him a big fresh warm smile. “All right, Stan,” I said. “But you better watch yourself from now on. You’re in big business now. You know how it is. There’s always some little guy who thinks he might like the fit of your shoes.”

He gulped and tomato-color brightened his cheeks. He took a step toward me, then turned and jumped into the car, slammed the door. It shut with the finality of a lowered coffin lid. I thought about Rudy and Stan. Stan would have something a little more fancy than a paint-spattered tarp. He would roll slowly on hushed black tires to a place of gently waved lawn. But at the end of the journey there would be just another hole, as Rudy got — as everybody got. No matter how far it was to the graveyard, everybody got the same once the trip was over.

The wheels grabbed and screeched as Stan gave it too much gas. Then the Lincoln moved forward smoothly, away from the house.

Behind me another motor started. I looked at the car as it went by. Charley Rinke drove slowly after Stan, slowly enough so that I could see the touch of smile at a corner of his mouth, the satisfied tilt of his head. I had an idea that Rinke had made an eleventh-hour connection and his life wouldn’t be altered too much because of Macy’s departure. His car followed Maxine’s obediently through the gate.

Mrs. Rinke sat beside her husband. I wasn’t able to see her face. She had her hands over it, tightly, as if she planned to keep them there for a long time, as if she were afraid to peer out at the world and the nightmare shapes that had sprung up in it.

The wind was stiffening now, coming around the north corner of the island and frothing the surface of the bay. There was nothing soft and gentle about the wind. It matched the color of the sky, and it was teething. I felt it harsh against my face.

Reavis had come out of the gatehouse with a suitcase. There were two cars parked off the road just outside the gate and he walked toward one of them, after closing the gate from force of habit. No need to shut the gate any more. Nobody would want in now. Turn off the juice in the fence. In a week it would be overgrown with creeping things.

I turned and walked toward the house. In my room I put together my few things and stored them in a suitcase one of the houseboys had dug out of a closet. They were getting ready to leave, too. Macy had paid them off. They seemed happy to be leaving, preparing for the long march to the highway where they would catch a bus.

I was about to toss the shoulder holster and automatic into the suitcase too, then changed my mind and put it on. I couldn’t be sure, but I might not be through with it yet.

Macy came in while I was checking all the drawers to see that I had everything. He looked as sloppy as he had the night I had arrived. He had dressed hurriedly, and missed a buttonhole in his haste. One side of the shirt was higher than the other. He lugged a big suitcase with him and parked it just inside the door.

“I called the airport,” he said, almost panting. “Plane’s waiting for me. No time to do this right. We were going by boat first. We’ll fly down to the Caribbean now. There’s an airstrip that isn’t watched on an island I know. Stay with me until I’m on the plane, will you Pete?” There was a note of pleading in his voice. Fear was icing his bones. The .45 was stuck into a big hip pocket of the grape-blue slacks he wore.

“I’ll drive you,” I said. “What have you got in the suitcase? You unload the safe?”

He nodded nervously. “I took close to half a million. The rest can stay there for now.”

“Who’s going with you?”

“Diane and Aimee. They got passports and everything. They’re fixed up legal. I’m not. It don’t make any difference.” He looked back over one shoulder. “Everybody gone?”

“Maxine and his crowd pulled out a little while ago. So did the Rinkes. I saw Reavis leave, too.”

“Watch the suitcase for me, will you, Pete? I’m going upstairs, pack a few things. Diane and Aimee are getting ready to leave. We’ll lock the house up and get out of here.”

He turned and hurried out before I could say anything to him. I glanced at the suitcase, then put my own beside it. A sudden gust of wind rattled the window. It was darkening outside. There would be a storm before long.

I walked out into the hall, hearing the French doors banging. I shut them, secured the latch. Outside, the palm trees shuddered and dropped in the grasp of the wind like witches shouting incantations. From somewhere close by I thought I heard a thump that I couldn’t identify.

The door to Owen Barr’s bedroom was open. I remembered that he had been lost in the sudden frightened shuffle after the speedboat explosion. The last time I had seen him he had been plodding toward the patio after offering me a drink I didn’t want.

After...

I walked into the bedroom quickly, remembering the cold steadiness of his voice as he had talked urgently to me. Something about being watched. Maybe he imagined it. But maybe there was a good reason for his anxiety.

He wasn’t in the bedroom. Some of the paintings had been taken from the walls, stacked on the bed. It was the only sign that the occupant might have considered moving out.

There was another thump. This time I got it. It came from the bathroom. It might have been a shoe hitting the side of the bathtub.

I pushed the bathroom door open, stepped inside. Owen Barr was lying half in the tub, half out of it. I saw the curve of his back over the side of the tub, and the protruding ridged handle of a switchblade knife. His foot moved just a little against the side of the tub, and there was the thumping sound again. It was getting weaker every time. I leaned over the tub and put my hand on his shoulder. I could see half his face. Blood ran out of his mouth and into the drain, a tiny red river in a white wasteland. His eyes were half open and had the look of a chloroformed frog. I thought his lower lip was twitching just a little.

“Who did it?” I said. “Who knifed you, Owen?” Maybe it was too late. Maybe the speech mechanism was rusted shut. But he tried to talk, and I could sense the great effort, though his face didn’t change much.

It was a tiny gurgling whisper. “Didn’t see...” That wasn’t all. He had more to tell me. One of his fingers curled a little. I didn’t dare move him from the awkward position.

“Carla... Kennedy. I saw her. Back was burned. Watch out, Pete...”

I put my face closer to his. “Who is Carla Kennedy, Owen?”

I don’t know if he heard me. He was a few seconds away from dying and what was in his mind pressed hard to get into words.

“She got... box from... car... threw it in... bay... I got it. Hid... hid in... bot...”

The last word stuck and he never finished it. He died quietly, with one last tiny shiver of breath. The blood spilling from his mouth had a metallic gleam.

I got up slowly, holding the few words that had come from him as if they were something light and delicate that would disintegrate and be gone forever if I wasn’t careful. There was a warning sound in my brain but I was too intent on something else to listen to it. Owen had hidden the contents of the box. I went into the bedroom, already beginning to suspect the answer I would find, but needing to know.

The bedroom was no different from all the others. I took the closet first, searched hurriedly. No place of concealment there. I turned to the dresser. The top drawer was jammed full of expensive underwear, socks, various accessories. I scooped them out of the drawer, pitched them toward the bed. Underneath I found six wrapped quarts of whisky lying side by side like bombs in an arsenal.

I scooted them out of the way one by one, stopped. One of the packaged bottles was far lighter, and there was no shift of liquid in it when I picked it up. I tore the sack away from the bottle. The top had been broken off once, then clumsily reglued. I took the neck and shoulder of the bottle and rebroke it with my hands. The contents of the bottle spilled into the drawer.

I looked at the items. Two neat clippings about the fire that had burned to death the family of Carla Kennedy more than twenty years ago. A little model of a Napoleonic soldier, trim and erect, rifle on his shoulder, coat a bright splash of red. A child’s locket, engraved Carla from Pop. It was an old locket, blackened in places. My fingers searched through snapshots, some of them old and yellowed. A family portrait. Another picture of a girl about thirteen, standing beside a man in a wheelchair. The most recent picture showed the invalid man, older now, beside a sidewalk newsstand. He was smiling proudly. He was all by himself. The newsstand was hung with gay streamers. It was opening day. Carla was probably there. But that time she wouldn’t want to be photographed. She wouldn’t want anyone, except maybe Stan Maxine, to know of her connection with the crippled news dealer in the wheelchair.

I had found Carla Kennedy. Like a lot of things you find in life, she had been found too late.

“Turn around, Mallory,” I heard a hard slow voice say.

Chapter Twenty-six

I felt the brush of a bony hand across the nape of my neck. It was too late to think about being careful now. I turned very slowly, holding the broken piece of bottle.

Taggart was all dressed up and ready for town. He wore a new blue suit and a self-conscious little bow tie and there was a small revolver in one outsized hand. It pointed right at my stomach. His face had about as much expression as a beach pebble.

“Where is she?” I asked him. I wondered how close he was to pulling the trigger. It might come without warning, with no spreading of lips or crinkling of lines around the eyes. But maybe he had just enough dislike for me to wait and let the fact that he was going to kill me soak in. It was a hope.

His hard lips came apart an eighth of an inch in a sly smile.

“Who do you want?”

“You know who I want,” I said. “Diane. Carla Kennedy. Which name do you know her by?”

He ignored that. His eyes caught the movement of broken glass in my hand. “Drop that,” he said. I let it slip to the rug.

“She’s down by the gatehouse,” Taggart said. “With Aimee. Waiting for Macy to come looking for Aimee.”

His big square feet moved a little uneasily, as if he realized he was taking too much time with me. “She’s going to kill him herself. I get to take care of you.”

“Like you took care of the others?” My lips felt large and numb. It was an effort to talk. I began to feel the rise of fear, the kind that freezes you stiff. It was working up through my legs without haste. I was always conscious of the gun under my arm. But with Taggart’s little revolver steady on my stomach, it might as well have been hanging in the closet—unloaded.

“That’s right,” Taggart said. He was getting a curious sort of enjoyment talking to me. It was even loosening up his face muscles some.

“You were the traveling boy,” I said, trying to keep my voice smooth and level, with no sudden pauses to give away my panic. “You had the chance to run the old gang down one by one and cut their throats. Sooner or later you could make all the territory and nobody would get suspicious. Just old Taggart doing his job. You use the same knife that’s sticking out of Owen’s back?”

He didn’t comment. He looked cool and efficient in the crisp blue suit. Some mother’s boy had grown into this. He couldn’t he quite sane.

“What about Harry Small? How did Diane feel when you bladed him? Or was it her idea?” Just keep talking, Mallory. Just keep jamming that thumbnail brain so he can’t get down to work.

“Diane said we had to,” he admitted. “She said you were going to find him and he’d talk about her. She didn’t want to do it.”

“But I was hard to kill, so she didn’t have a choice. You tried twice. I suppose you were with Winkie when he pulled the shotgun ambush. It would be your idea. Did you doctor the Buick over on Monessen, too?”

“Yeah.” He looked faintly puzzled. “How did you get out of that? Nobody saw me.”

“Only a little boy who didn’t look old enough to talk. He should grow up and get J. Edgar’s job. He deserves it.”

Something happened inside Taggart then. I could feel it happening. I could sense the ponderous slow thoughts swinging around to the problem at hand: my death.

“How did Diane talk you into this?” I said. “Those passionate midnight meetings on the beach. Did she tell you she loved you?”

He took a full step toward me, as if I had bitten a nerve. His mouth opened. “She does love me. I love her.” He made a sad calf noise in his throat. “Did you ever see her back? She’s beautiful. But her back — it’s ugly. Macy Barr did that to her.” The gun nosed up a little. “I love her. I’d do anything for her. Anything she asked me. We’re going to go away together. Nobody ever loved me before. I never got anything but kicked around, because I was a bastard. Everybody hated me. They looked at me with hateful eyes and wished I’d run away. Diane doesn’t hate me.”

From outside the house, above the sound of the wind, there were two shots, sharp cracks spaced a second apart. And a child began to scream in terror, as if the shots had unlocked a hidden place inside her and old nightmares tumbled out, writhing in her mind.

Taggart thumbed back the hammer. I was going for the gun anyway. It was no good — my fingers would never touch it — but it was no good just to stand there and die, either. A second before I shoved my hand toward the butt of the .38 there was another shot, different from the first two. Heavier. The faraway roar of a .45. I knew Macy had somehow got to the automatic in his back pocket. Taggart knew it, too. He was thrown off stride by the sound of it. The slow-focusing mental processes were off me for a full second.

I had the gun out and shot him twice in the chest before he could do anything. The blows from the heavy .38 slugs would have knocked an ordinary man flat on his back, but he was not ordinary. Two more shots came together, blending in a hot stunning roar. One of them was his. I felt it hit like a pole thrust sharply, end first, into my stomach. I had tipped the barrel of the .38 up half an inch before the third shot. The first two set him up so that his head was turned slightly to one side. The third slug tore his throat out and went on into his head at an angle, along the jawline. He turned a little more, his eyes glazing, and then his legs failed and he pitched downward, spouting blood.

I backed away from the wreckage, feeling sick. I had to lean against the dresser. The automatic was almost too heavy for my hand but I continued to hold it. I knew the wound was bad without looking. I felt blood trickling down the inside of one leg.

I reached down and found the hole and put the heel of my hand against it. I walked with clown steps out of the room. I put my shoulder against the wall and slid along it, pushing grimly toward the living room. There wasn’t so much pain. It was more the idea that I was hurt that frightened me. I felt a swooping dizziness. It would be better to sit down, but I had to get outside. If she was still alive I had to stop her. I remembered Aimee’s shrill scream. There was no more sound now, except the treacherous howl of the wind.

The front door was open. I put the fingers of my hand around the knob of the screen, but it was hard to turn because I was holding the gun, too. Finally I got it open, but I had leaned forward too much and fell outside with the swing of the door, rolling down the steps, feeling the blunt edges against my back and arms and shoulders. There was a pain in me, as though someone’s hands were tearing at my gut.

I lifted my head, looked down the curved drive to the gatehouse. Thunder grumbled above. Swirling clouds pressed low upon the island.

Aimee was lying motionless on her back near the drive, arms spread, one knee up. Diane walked past the child slowly, not looking at her. She had a gun. She was watching Macy, who lay on his belly a dozen steps from the gatehouse. Macy didn’t move. There was an object near him that might have been the .45.

Diane aimed carefully at Macy. In that same moment, he seemed to stir, an arm moving slightly. He wasn’t dead yet. I raised my own gun, taking time only to see that I had the right direction. I had little hope of hitting her.

I squeezed off the remaining shots in the magazine, the big automatic jerking in my hand, the noise deafening me. Then a sudden spasm left me weak. My face was cold, my eyes full of perspiration. I let go the gun and wiped at them. It was odd that she hadn’t returned the shots. I looked up again, hauling myself to my knees. For a long moment I could see with perfect clarity.

Diane had fallen near the gate. She must have panicked when I began to shoot, and tried to run. The gate seemed to be locked. She hooked her fingers over stiff strands of wire, pulled herself to her feet, leaned for a moment against the gate, as if she were trying to shove it open. There was a car parked on the other side, pointed toward the causeway.

Something was wrong with one of her ankles. She might have twisted it when she fell. She glanced up, then put her arms above her head and began to climb the woven wire gate laboriously. It was eight feet high. It would take her only a few seconds to wriggle over the top and reach the car on the other side.

I tried to get up, sat back groaning from the fury of sudden pain. All I could do was watch her. She seemed to be having some trouble. Then I became aware that someone else was watching her, too. Macy Barr.

His head was lifted no more than half an inch from the ground. He looked at her for a few seconds, then began to crawl forward. I saw where he was going. Not toward Diane but to the door of the gatehouse. Once he stopped, and I thought he was finished. But with an awkward lunge he reached his feet, staggered forward to the doorway, leaned inside.

Diane saw him. She had reached the top bar of the gate, was ready to lift one leg and then the other over the top, drop to the ground. But fear held her fast for the seconds she needed to jump to safety. She stared at Macy and there was terror in her eyes. Above the gathering shriek of the storm I could hear her own scream, lifting to meet the lashing wind that whipped at her hair.

“Don’t, Macy! No—”

She was still screaming when Macy threw the switch inside the gatehouse that electrocuted her mercilessly while her tortured body jerked and wrenched in a useless effort to be free of the clinging current.

I put my head down and waited. I knew there would have to be a time when I would find enough strength to go down there. I waited patiently for that time and finally I got to my feet and shuffled through a dark tunnel of angry rain to the gatehouse, found Macy dead on the floor. I closed the switch. I walked past him and looked at a telephone. I picked up the receiver and with a finger as large and awkward as a banana I dialed a number that would bring help. Then I sat on the edge of the bed trying to hold on to slipping strength. The child would be wandering in the rain, lost and afraid — if she were still alive. I thought she might be. Diane wouldn’t shoot her.

It was all over. But I had to wait with a hole in my stomach and wonder. Sometimes they could fix it, and sometimes they couldn’t. I had bled only a little from the mouth, with all the walking around. That encouraged me. But still you never knew.

I hoped Elaine would be able to get to me fast. I wouldn’t feel so afraid then.

Chapter Twenty-seven

First there was the hospital. Memories of it were sporadic, vivid, unorganized. Bits and pieces of colored glass in a clear jar. Moments of knifing pain. The upended bottle and long tube attached to one arm. An oxygen tent. A whirring circle of crisp clean whiteness. Faces, of course. Expressions of masked uncertainty, professional optimism.

And fear. Elaine was the one who was afraid. She held tight to one hand during the great swinging loops in and out of darkness, the bird-wing beat of pain in my stomach. Then the hand wasn’t there and the faces were careful little masks until there wasn’t anything but eyes peering at me and the measured drip of chloroform on a pad across my nose. I wasn’t very interested in anything. I couldn’t quite remember why I was there. It didn’t seem to matter, except that I was probably sick. No, not sick. I remembered, then. Shot. Maybe it was bad. There was no time to worry about it. There was no time.

Afterwards I was bound tightly about the middle. They wouldn’t let me eat. Tubes in the veins nourished me. Elaine’s face was more cheerful. The faces that came with badges weren’t. They were weary and irritable from overwork and trying hard to be polite but not really caring. Some of them were government badges. I told them everything I thought was safe for me to tell. I told it about nineteen times on successive days with a doctor standing by and after a while the badges went away with tired sighs. The papers printed very little, Elaine told me later.

I grew stronger. Lying in bed, I tried not to think. One of the badges — gold-filled — came back to see me, a well-dressed guy with a pink face. He talked to me for a long time, alone. Afterwards I was completely clear. He got mad at me three separate times because I wouldn’t tell him everything he wanted to know. He tried to convince me I had enough information to wreck organized crime in the area. I told him it wouldn’t stay wrecked six months, and meanwhile I’d have bought myself a hole in the head. He saw my point. He signed some kind of release and the hospital said I could go home. My doctor from Orange Bay came down, checked me over suspiciously and took me back in a red and black ambulance.

Two days later Elaine came into my room at the clinic with the morning newspaper.

“Good morning,” she said. “How did we sleep last night?”

“Better,” I yawned. “Still have that middle-of-the-night period. Wake up reaching for a gun that isn’t there. Then lie awake as if I never have slept and never will again.”

She took away the breakfast tray with the food I hadn’t eaten and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap.

“You promised you’d finish telling me about it when you could,” she said.

I sighed, put aside Steve Canyon and the other denizens of the comic strip page, and began the long story of hate and vengeance. I told her of the old fire and its lone survivor, the little orphan named Carla Kennedy who grew into a lovely woman carrying the terrible scars of the fire on her back and the even more terrible scars of hatred in her festering mind. I told it all, how she had used the dull-wilted giant, Taggart, as a messenger of death, how she had ruthlessly removed all obstacles to her crazy plan: the ineffectual drunk, Owen Barr; the crippled newsdealer who had been like a father to her; me, when I began to dig too close to the truth. Except that she had failed to get me, three times.

Elaine’s face tightened when I told about Taggart’s last, nearly successful try at me. Her fists clenched as I described the gunfight and my long, tortured trip to the outside, too late to do the job Macy had called me back to do.

I began to tell of Macy’s last, long struggle to the gatehouse and the death switch, but Elaine shut her eyes and put her hand on my lips. “That’s enough,” she said. “It’s... terrible. I don’t... ever want to hear you mention it again, Pete. Never. It’s just a miracle you’re alive. I want to forget all that ever happened.”

I took her hand, kissed it. She looked at the door, then leaned back on the pillows with me. I put an arm around her shoulders. “As soon as I’m well enough to get away from here, we’ll be married. Then we’ll take a long trip. Havana or Nassau, maybe. It was nice of the cops to turn over that envelope they found in Macy’s pocket to me, just because he had put my name on it. Five thousand dollars. We’ll spend some of it because I think I earned it. The rest belongs to Aimee.”

I felt Elaine stiffen slightly, but her eyes remained closed.

“How is she?” I said.

Elaine smiled bleakly. “She eats. She sleeps, a little. But she won’t respond to me, or to anybody. She... just sits, and stares with those dark terrible eyes. Dr. Richman says she’ll probably snap out of it.”

“We’ll do what we can,” I said.

“Yes, Pete,” she said obediently.

“You didn’t like it when I had her brought here, did you?” I said after a short pause.

“Pete, we don’t need to talk about it now.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s clear it up.”

She twisted a little, indecisively. “Pete — she doesn’t belong with us, really. She... she’ll never fit in. We know nothing about her, except that she’s probably not legitimate. We know about the filth and squalor she came from. She was wild once. She could go back to being wild. She might grow up to be nothing but grief. A... busty, sullen little tramp, easy pickings for every boy in town. She’s — trouble for us, Pete. Trouble we don’t need to take on ourselves. We’ll have children of our own to think about.”

I tried to tell her the way I felt, but I knew I couldn’t explain. Not now. It was something she would have to learn, and maybe she was right, and I was wrong. But I had to do it this way and because Elaine believed in me she would go along with it. Reluctantly. But she’d try.

“Maybe she’ll turn out to be nothing but trouble for us,” I said frankly. “But I think she deserves some sort of chance. Macy gave me more than a chance once. I — I don’t quite know what to say.”

She got up then. A smile warmed her eyes. She bent over and kissed my forehead. “It’s all right, Pete. Really. We’ll do the best we can. And it’ll work out for us. Just... be patient with me, darling. Understand me. I guess I was born a snob, that’s all.”

I held her for just a moment. “With you as a model, Aimee will turn out just about perfect.” Her lips touched my face again; then she walked out quickly, snuffling and having some kind of trouble with her eyes. She slipped through the door, and it clicked softly behind her. I smiled once, then turned on my side, so the sun was warm on my face. I waited for her to come back.

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