Carny kill

14

This Eddy reminded me of the mousy little beak-nosed character who used to play in all the gangster movies twenty-five years back. Nervous, stuttery, with the predatory look of a voracious moray eel.

"What-what kind of a box is it?" he wanted to know.

The three of us were standing in the inky shadows of the alleyway between the storehouse and the bunkhouse. Lloyd Franks' office was right above us. Eddy's busy little birdeyes batted here, there, anywhere except on the face of the person he was talking to. He made me jumpy.

"I don't know, for godsake," I said. "I'm no box man."

"Yeah, but is it a wall-a wall job or an upright, or-or a combo or what? Know what I mean? What-what is it?"

"It's not in a wall and it's a combination box," I told him.

"Well, all-all right, then." He rubbed the fingertips of his right hand against his pantsleg. "I-I just want to know, see? What kind-what kind it is, see?"

"C'mon," Jerry said. "Let's get going before one of the security guards comes staggering by."

Truth to tell, I had my sincere doubts about this Eddy. He was so goddam nervous and jittery. But I dropped all doubt as soon as he took on the first locked door with his little pick-tool. He had that thing open quicker than I could have turned the knob.

We went up the stains with a fountainpen-sized flash to guide us. Eddy kept mumbling to himself and rubbing his fingertips on his pants, while Jerry complacently hummed an old song about that masturbating, fornicating sonofabitch Colombo.

The thing I liked about Jerry is that he never once asked me why I wanted to break into Franks' office and crack his safe. It gave me a good feeling. A man who will trust you on face value is a rare find in today's society.

The door to Franks' office gave Eddy about as much trouble as I would expect to find in opening a cracker box. We stepped into the large room and I flashed the light at the distant safe. Eddy approached the box on a right oblique, sizing it up as he went.

"Yeah," he muttered. "It'll-it'll take-take a couple a minutes. Know what I mean? Couple a minutes."

I nodded sagely in the dark. He was the real article as far as I was concerned. He could do no wrong. I held the light for him as he gave the dial the first practice spin.

"Turn it-turn it off, huh?" he whispered. "It distracts my concentration. Know what I mean? My concentration."

Jerry was sitting in Franks' chair nonchalantly going through Franks' desk, drawer by drawer, using the moon through the window behind him to see by. He was still humming about that no-good Colombo.

"The captain had a cabinboy, he loved him like a br-other. And each night between the decks they climbed upon one an-o-ther."

Eddy had his left ear against the combination dial, listening to the tumblers. He sandpapered his fingertips a couple of times on the rug and tried again.

"Seven-seventeen right," he mumbled to himself, "four left."

He had it open. I hunkered down with the pocket flash and started through the papers. I was looking for an envelope and I turned it up in less than a minute. Jerry had left the desk and he and Eddy were both watching me expectantly.

I didn't say anything. I slipped the envelope in my pocket and stood up and nudged the safe door closed with my knee. Eddy knelt down and wiped the dial with a handkerchief.

"What brand of hooch do you like, Eddy?" I asked him. "I owe you a gallon of it."

His eyes blinked from right to left and back again.

"No-no thanks. I never-never touch it, see? Not a-not a drop. It makes-makes you nervous. Know what I mean? Makes you too nervous."

The next day was a sleighride. Nobody was murdered and I didn't stumble over any bodies and Ferris left me alone. I worked at my stand with my little shells and that went well too. No beefs.

I closed up when the Viking horn gave its asthmatic moan, shook my head when Gabby made a have-a-drink gesture, and strolled over to the stripshow. The last round of marks was just filing out the front and it was rather interesting to watch their faces and catch what they had to say.

One lanky built slack-faced loner came out wearing a glassy sly eyed look and I thought it would probably be just as well if he had a police call that night or else some silly little fourteen-year-old gadabout switchtail was liable to find herself being raped from one convenient end of the beach to the other.

But it was none of my business. I went around to the back and waited for Billie.

Bev came out first and said something to me which she seemed to think was humor but was really only plain dirty, but I managed to cough up a laugh for her because her boyfriend was a friend of mine. Then she went away and Billie came out.

"Hi, Thax. What have you been up to tonight?"

"I've been drilling a hole in the side of the building here, so I can peek at you nautch girls."

"Um. It sounds like you. Won't you ever grow up, Thax?"

"Well," I said, "I still have hopes."

Billie made a wry face.

"Well, at least you didn't say it doesn't really matter. Where do you want to go?"

I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

"Let's go back to Dracula's Chamber of the Horny Vampires."

"Thax! Honestly. Someone might hear you."

"Do I care? Haven't they already guessed I love you?"

Her chin came up firmly and she gave a one bob nod.

"Yes, there's a rumor to that effect," she said. "In fact, Mrs. Cochrane asked me today what was up between you and I."

"So what did you tell her, the nosy bitch?"

"Simply that whatever it was it was my business, not hers."

"Atta girl."

But I was puzzled. Why should May care about what Billie and I had going? It damn sure couldn't be jealousy. So…

We entered Dracula's Castle and went up the breakneck stains to the room with the archer's cross. It was a small room but it seemed indefinite and larger in the dark, as if the walls were no longer there. I headed for the bed. "You're always in such an impetuous hurry, Thax." I could hear the smile in her voice.

"No, that's been my whole trouble," I said. "Only at moments like this."

That was the sad truth, too.

There was no mist that night and the stars were brightly framed in the crucifixlike window. I got up after a while and went over to the window and looked down at Neverland.

The night was growing. Most of the lights were already out and the escape-searching marks had taken themselves somewhere to rest. A half moon mutilated Neverland- long stripes of palms, shadow-scars of paths, mottles of buildings. It was like watching a dark tellurian carnival quietly thronging through a ruined and dead city. Or it was like a sleeping animal, a tiger of deep blue and blue-white, an enormous leopard.

"De Saint-Exupery says the stars are like lights at the issue of a dark pit," I told Billie. "A man climbs toward them, and then, once he reaches them, he can never come down again but stays up there forever chewing the stars."

"Who on earth is Exupery?" Her voice seemed hollow and disembodied, speaking from the shadow pool of the bed.

"He's not on earth. He was a French aviator and writer. They used to call him the Conrad of the air. The Krauts shot him down over the English Channel in 'Fortyf our. You remember Gable's old picture _Night Flight?_ Exupery wrote that."

"Please, lover," Billie said, and the smile was in her voice again, "I can barely remember Gable. I'm only a child, you know." Then she dropped the bantering tone and said:

"But I like what your Frenchman said about the stars. I understand him. We see the goal and we want it and we scratch and claw our way up to it. Once we get there we can't let go. We can't ever again go back to the bottom rung."

I left the window and went back to the bed and sat down and looked at her in the dark.

"I wouldn't know. I'm still on the bottom rung."

"You won't be for long, darling. In another ten days we'll walk out of here and all places like it, forever. Um-that's what I wanted to talk to you about, before you made me lose my train of thought. Should we marry, Thax?"

"I don't know, Billie. That's up to you, isn't it?"

"What do you mean up to me? Why isn't it up to both of us?"

"Because I don't have much say in it, do I? After all, it's your money we're using."

"Thax. Don't say that, Thax'

"It's the truth, isn't it? I'm just a tap-city spieler going along for the free ride."

"Thax. Stop it. I won't have you talking or feeling like a kept man. It sounds dirty and it-it isn't healthy."

"Well, it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"Thax, I wish to God you'd stop saying that. Because it does matter. Everything that touches you and me matters because you and I are all that matters."

"That sounds a little tangled but I suppose you're saying that all that really matters is that you get to the top of the ladder and you take me with you."

"That's right. That's it exactly."

"Well, that's what bothers me about it. You're taking me. I'm not going on my own steam. That's why I'm starting to feel like a kept man."

Billie put a hand on my bare leg.

"But there isn't any other way, Thax. Don't you see? You're smart, you have brains, you know things, but you won't help yourself. You just coast. You always have- because you go around telling yourself nothing really matters. That's why we have to do it my way. If we don't we'll never do it at all. Not together."

"You can't arrange things that easily in life," I said, "no matter how strong your will is. It just doesn't pan out."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's fatality. Like us right now. We're caught in a current of murder, and when you're caught in a current you can't help it. Will has very little to do with anything. There's something inside us that makes the will play tricks."

"Thax, will you please forget about those stupid murders? They don't concern us."

"Yes they do, Billie," I said. "I've already explained to you how they concern me. And if you and I are in love, then what concerns me has to concern you."

"Well, what do you intend to do about it? You're not a detective, you know." She sat up in the bed. She was getting peeved. "Find me a cigarette, please."

I found us both one and lit them the way Paul Henreid did in _Now, Voyager_.

"No," I said, "I'm not a dick, but things are finally starting to make a little sense to me."

"What do you mean? You don't know who killed Rob Cochrane, do you?"

"Well, I'm not ready to jump up on a bally stand and shout 'I know who done it!' But I've got a theory working."

"Well, tell me."

"Not yet. I want to kick it around some more first. Maybe in a couple of days I'll throw it in the water and see if it floats."

That was the whole trouble with my theory right then. I was sure it would make a splash, but without more evidence to give it buoyancy I was just as sure it would sink like a rock.