Death Spins the Platter

18

Layton dropped the two teenagers at their homes, drove off carefully, and stopped carefully at the first tavern he saw.

He carefully downed four shots of bourbon, neat, in rapid succession, sat musing for a while, then ordered two more.

When he returned to his car he drove, still more carefully, to the Freeway. He took the slow lane because his head felt large, light, and tippy.

He parked downtown and began shuffling through the streets, hands plunged in his trouser pockets and his shoulders up near his ears, as if he were cold.

An hour or so later he went into another bar.

He reached his apartment at a quarter to four the next morning, long after the official closing time of Los Angeles bistros. He reached it on his hands and knees. He had little recollection of events past midnight. He had been rolled somewhere, and survival instinct had kept him from attempting to drive home. There was the vaguest memory of a cab-driver to whom he had given his wrist watch in payment for depositing him at his door. That had been ages before, because he had had to creep across the sidewalk and into the building and up the stairs, a time-consuming procedure.

Now he found himself safely ensconced in his nest, surrounded by a horrible odor. Something died in here, he said to himself with great amusement, and I guess it’s you. You stink, old boy, all over. Inside as well as out.

He forced his eyes to stay open by pure cussedness and took a floor’s-eye view of himself. It was pitiful. He felt so sad at what he saw that he began to cry.

He stopped crying long enough to be sick again, this time over his own floor, and then he cried some more.

The next thing he knew, he was dialing the Bulletin. Or trying to. He tried six times, but each time something went wrong. Finally he dialed the operator and made a desperate effort.

“Look, sweetheart, I can’t seem to get my number, wouzhyou get it for me?” He articulated the number. “Liferdeath.”

He heard a ladylike sniff and then after a while Layton woke up with a voice saying in his ear, “Come on! Who is this?”

“Watshon?” That was funny. He didn’t remember asking for the night desk. “Wonnerful age the age velectronics, Watshon.”

“Say,” the voice said, “This couldn’t be Jim Layton, could it?”

“Well, whonell dyathink it izh?”

“Where are you, Jim?”

“Home,” Layton said indignantly.

“Then you must have just got there. Dracula’s out for your blood, Jimmie boy. Where’ve you been all day?”

“Watshon, lish... shen.” Layton swallowed. “Listen. Msick. Mdamsick. Can’t come ininamoming. Tella Cheese.”

“You may never have to come in,” Watson said. “Not if I read the signs and portents correctly. What’s happened, Jim? I’ve never known you to be drunk before.”

“Whosh drunk?” Layton wept.

“Jim” — Watson sounded concerned now — “how about my sending one of the boys over? You sound like you need help.”

Layton said, spacing it out, “Not — ‘like you need’ — Watshon. A zif.”

“You’re okay.” Watson laughed. “Go to bed, Jim.” He hung up.

When Layton opened his eyes his first thought was that the Russians had dropped the big one and his whole apartment had been picked up by the scruff of its neck, shaken, and dropped back helter-skelter. The telephone table was lying on its top like an overturned turtle, the phone was off its cradle and buzzing feebly for help, some animal had left a mess on the rug, the couch was in the wrong place, a picture had been knocked off the wall and its glass shattered, and there was a zigzag trail of crumpled, smeared, noisome clothing leading from the mess on the rug to the fallen telephone and back across the room to the bathroom. At this point Layton closed his eyes. The one glimpse he had had of his bathroom was just too, too much.

When he opened his eyes again he crawled off the divan and began the work of rehabilitation. He was not surprised to find himself naked, although he never slept naked; rather, he was grateful. The vision of himself falling asleep in the befouled wreckage of his clothing was too sickening to contemplate for more than a moment.

It was not until he was scalding his hide under the shower, with the apartment reasonably restored and most of the stench gone, that he remembered. The shock that followed the memory struck him with concussive force. In one soundless stroke it crushed out his hangover, vaporized the mush on his brain... cleansed him to the bone so that he cowered, inwardly naked as well, before the unveiled granite face of truth.

Layton emptied a six-cup pot of coffee. Three cups he drank black, the rest he took with cream and sugar. He made no toast. Although he had not swallowed a morsel of solid food for almost twenty-four hours, the mere thought churned his stomach.

He had to retrace his erratic route of the night before to reclaim his car.

It was almost 3 P.M. when he swung into the driveway. The doors of the double garage were open. The white Jaguar was there, the station wagon was not.

Nevertheless, Layton thumbed the doorbell. He thumbed it several times without result.

He returned to his car, backed out of the driveway, and parked on the street. Then he trudged over to the swimming pool, lowered himself into an aluminum-slatted chair, and waited.

At a quarter to four the station wagon pulled into the driveway. Seeing him, Nancy waved and drove on into the garage. He was at the front door when she came out of the garage.

“Hello, Jim.” She did not seem surprised to see him. “Waiting long?”

“Not long.”

“I had to drive my father and mother to the airport. Poor dears, they’re all worn out. I wanted them to stay a few days, but dad had to get back to his practice. Did I ever tell you my dad is a doctor?”

“Yes,” Layton said.

“I’m sorry you didn’t meet them, Jim.” She unlocked the door and went in, and he followed her. “I think you’d have liked one another.”

Layton shut the door, bolted it, and put the guard chain in place. Nancy had stopped at the little wall mirror in the foyer to take off her hat and remove her gloves and give her incredible mass of jet hair a few pokes. At the sound of the bolt and guard chain she turned in surprise.

“I hope you’re not expecting anybody,” Layton said.

“No.” She frowned ever so little. “What’s the matter, Jim? Is something wrong?” Her tone lightened. “Lose your job, or fall in love?”

Layton stood there looking at her. He was not conscious of any emotion at all. It was as if the thalamic function that made it possible for him to feel pain had stopped working, starting a paralytic process that had reached to the tiniest ganglia of his nervous system.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Nancy said quietly. “I know now there’s something dreadfully the matter. Let’s go into the living room.”

He followed her in.

“Sit down.”

He remained standing.

She glanced at him in a puzzled rather than an apprehensive way. “Will you have a drink?”

“Yesterday was for drinking,” Layton said. “Today is for being cold, dead sober.”

“Was it the funeral, Jim? I... looked for you at the cemetery, but I didn’t see you, although I did catch a glimpse of you in the chapel before the service.”

She came to him and touched his hand. “I know, Jim, I know you’ve fallen in love with me. I... feel a great deal for you, too. So soon... It’s confused me. I mean... I want you to put your arms around me, Jim, oh, I do. I want you to kiss me, and I want to kiss you. But... not yet.”

“Please don’t do that,” Layton said, staring down at her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was stupidly, thoughtlessly female. I’m sorry, Jim.” She went over to the big chair near the fireplace and sat down, tucking one leg under her like a little girl. “I realize how hard it must have been for you yesterday, having to come to toy husband’s funeral, having to watch me in the role of his widow—”

“If I’d known then what I know now,” Layton said, “I might have enjoyed your performance.”

“What do you mean, Jim?” Her hands groped for the chair arms and clutched.

Layton went over to the fireplace and put his forearm on the mantelpiece and rested his head on his forearm. Her eyes followed him, hugely troubled.

“I can’t remember the time when the very thought of doing a dishonest thing didn’t shame and frighten me, Nancy. It’s been very easy for me to be honest, considering the way I was brought up. When I was old enough to analyze it, it even bothered me. I felt there was something unnatural about me. I asked an acquaintance of mine once, a psychiatrist, whether that wasn’t so, as if honesty were abnormal, a disease. He was surprised. He said he didn’t remember ever having been asked that question in just that way, and that to attempt to answer it he’d have to take me on as a patient.” Layton laughed. “Can you tie that? Be honest, and you need a psychiatrist.”

He stopped laughing, and the room was very quiet. “I’ve often wondered just how honest I really am. It’s been a cinch for me to turn down bribes to sit on a story or kill it. I haven’t had the least trouble returning lost wallets to their owners intact. It’s perfectly simple for me to resist defrauding an insurance company, even though it’s the kind of fraud most people indulge in and the companies have given up trying to lick. I’ve even been honest in the other sense, as far as I know — with myself, I mean. To thine own self be true — that jazz. But you know something? Yesterday I found out I’d never been put to the test. The real test. Where you love somebody, and she loves you — you think — and you’ve got to make a decision that involves not money, not ethics, but your lives... both your lives.”

He swung around. The liquid eyes were so full of pain that he had to steel himself to keep from looking away.

Layton walked over to stand before her. She stared up at him, silent and bloodless. “It’s even tougher than that, Nancy. Because, you see, I don’t have to do anything actively dishonest, just keep my mouth shut. The yen to do exactly that is so damn powerful it tore me apart yesterday, and today it’s paralyzed me.” But the mechanism of pain — was it turned on by hers? — began working again without warning. Layton groped to a nearby chair. He sat down with a groan.

“Jim.” It was the faintest echo of a whisper.

Her pallor was so deathly as she sat across from him, her eyes so distended, her body so frozen, that Layton jumped up and began walking up and down. Anything — anything to keep from having to look at her.

After a moment he said in a rational voice, “I drove Nora Perkins and Wayne Mission home from the funeral parlor yesterday. You remember — the president and vice president of the Tutter King Los Angeles Fan Club.

“The boy insisted on discussing your husband’s death, and in the course of it dropped something neither he nor the girl had mentioned when Trimble questioned them. Wayne said that after he and Nora looked into Tutter’s dressing room during the intermission and didn’t see him there, Nora stopped in the ladies’ room before they went back to Studio A. The kid said that, all told, he must have been waiting in the corridor there some four minutes, most of it while Nora was in the john. As far as he was concerned, the only human being he laid eyes on during the whole time was Stander, down at the end of the hall, headed for the Studio B and C control room.”

“I don’t... understand.” She sounded so helplessly tired that Layton found himself grinding his teeth.

“Don’t you, Nancy? I’ll refresh your memory. We’ll start from the time Tutter left Studio A, at the news break. He was immediately followed by Lola Arkwright, and just then Hathaway left his office. King stopped for a moment to let Lola catch up with him, and Hathaway was practically on their heels. Tutter went into his dressing room, Lola walked on a few steps and went into hers — next door — and Hathaway continued down the hall to the B-C control booth.”

It was like something out of a dream, or a movie, or anything make-believe — his walking about calmly reciting what they both knew, as if any of it were necessary. Yet he went on, driven by a compulsion to be logical, to wrap it up... that was it, to wrap it up, get rid of it. Out of his system? But then what?

“Then you came out of Studio A, Nancy. You told Trimble you walked up to Tutter’s dressing room, saw the door was shut, decided not to go in after all, went into the ladies’ room next door to the studio, and from the ladies’ room returned to the studio.

“I was about twenty seconds or more later than you leaving Studio A. By the time I got into the hall you would have had to be in the ladies’ room to account for my not seeing you, if your story was the truth.

“I walked down the corridor looking into dressing rooms with their doors open, then I walked back. I’d certainly have heard the door of the ladies’ room open while my back was turned; I noticed when I first got to the station that its automatic closing gadget is out of order, and the noise the door makes being opened and closed by hand in those halls is loud and startling. And when I was coming back up the hall I’d certainly have seen as well as heard you coming out. So when I turned into the other arm of the L, you must still — according to your story — have been in the ladies’ room.

“Hathaway’s office door is only a few steps from where the corridors meet and the Studio A and ladies’ room doors are situated. Stander came out of Hathaway’s office as I approached to go in. I went into the office; Stander walked on. He turned into the arm of the L I’d just come from and proceeded toward the B-C control booth. And what did Stander say? That after noticing me go into Hathaway’s office he saw and heard no one until he got down toward the end of the hall. That, Nancy, still leaves you in the ladies’ room.

“As Stander got to the far end of the hall Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins stepped out of Studio A. Remember, you’re still in the ladies’ room. The kids looked into Tutter’s dressing room, found it empty, turned back... and Wayne waited in the hall while Nora went into the ladies room.”

She was leaning back in the chair now in an exhausted way, her head uptilted, watching his lips.

“This is what Nora Perkins told me yesterday, Nancy. I can quote her exact words; there are some things that burn into your brain like acid.” And now Layton’s eyes were burning. “She said: ‘The only person either Wayne or I laid eyes on from the time we left Studio A until we went back in was that Mr. Stander down at the end of the hall.’ I ask you: Since the recap I’ve just gone through places you in that ladies’ room when Nora went in, why didn’t she see you? Because, Nancy, you weren’t there.”

Layton leaned over her. She did not react in any way.

“I didn’t believe it at first. I tried to give you an out, find one for you. But I couldn’t. If it had been the usual public ladies’ room you might have been in one of the stalls, and conceivably Nora might not have noticed you. But it isn’t the usual public ladies’ room, Nancy. It’s like a small private bathroom; all it has is a washbowl and an open toilet — not even a window. As a matter of fact, had you been in that ladies’ room, Nancy, Nora couldn’t have got in at all. It bolts from inside, and you’d hardly have gone in without bolting it.

“But just to make absolutely sure I asked Nora: Was anyone in there when she went in? Of course she said no. In fact, what she said was: ‘How could there have been?’

“I wriggled, and I squirmed, and I fought and bled to get you out of that damn ladies’ room in a reasonable, legitimate way. But in the end it all came down to the same thing: Your story, combined with the others’ stories, placed you in the ladies’ room; and you weren’t.

“So, Nancy, you lied to Trimble. You hadn’t gone into the ladies’ room in the first place. Why would you lie about a trivial thing like that? Here’s the answer I’ve had to come up with, Nancy — look at me!” He seized her chin and forced her head up. “The answer is: You lied because you were with Tutter in dressing room 1, sticking an ice pick into his heart. Now tell me where I’m wrong. Tell me!”

He felt a froth form at the corner of his mouth and, as if awakening from a nightmare, he released her chin and licked the froth away and straightened up.

But Nancy’s head drooped and she shut her eyes.

“Tell me, Nancy,” Layton pleaded quietly. “For God’s sake, tell me.”

Nancy got up. She walked out into the foyer and picked up her bag and came back, opening it, searching for a cigarette, a lighter.

“No, Jim,” she said at his automatic movement. “You just sit down.”

He sat down. She found the cigarette and the lighter and she sat down opposite him with the bag in her lap and inhaled deeply.

“The Arkwright woman doesn’t know it,” she said, “but she missed out by a hair. Before Tutter left for the station Friday he told me that he’d done a lot of thinking since KZZX canceled his contract. He told me that since his disc-jockey career was over and he had to build a new career for himself, he’d decided to make a clean sweep. He wanted a divorce.”

She leaned back, smoking hungrily.

“He wanted a divorce from me, and he was going to marry Lola Arkwright. He smiled at me and said, yes, he knew she was a tramp, but she was wonderful in bed — something I, apparently, had never been for him. They were muy simpático as lovers, and Lola was so desperate for respectability that she’d stop being a tramp the moment he put a wedding ring on her finger. Do you know something, Jim? I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right about her. Tutter was very shrewd when it came to sizing up women. The reason Lola was so confused is that his entire career, based as it was on the admiration of women, had made him supercautious in his relations with them, as well as contemptuous. It was characteristic that Tutter would give his wife the bounce without committing himself in so many words to her successor. Actually he told me he was going to announce his engagement to Lola at the end of the telecast. That was to be his big surprise — to her, I suppose. She’d had to guess at it. He’d been so vague with her that she was able to talk herself out of it afterward. I think the whole idea of announcing his engagement on the air as his sign-off was motivated by his basic contempt for women. Down deep Tutter hated the millions of women, from adolescents to grandmothers, who drooled every time he opened his mouth. It was his way of expressing his hatred.”

Layton nodded slowly. “Tell me, Nancy. How come everything Trimble turned up about your private life indicated that you and King were happily married?”

“Why shouldn’t it? I thought so, too.” Nancy flipped her cigarette into the fireplace. Her eyes had cleared, her voice was strong and steady now. “I wonder if you can imagine, Jim, what happened to me when — out of a clear sky, without the slightest warning — Tutter pronounced my fate. I’d known about Lola, and there’d been other women, and he knew I knew — but I’d let him, or myself, talk me into believing they were meaningless. Of course, I was a fool. I really loved him. For ten years I’d kept myself buried, like a mole, watching the man I loved besieged by armies of other women, sleeping with some of them... kept myself buried willingly, because I thought I was the only woman really important in his life, and that by keeping myself buried I was furthering my loved and loving husband’s career.

“And he blew it all up in my face with one word on Friday morning.

“What happened to me, Jim,” Nancy went on, steadily still, “was that after he left the house I went into the kitchen and rummaged around in a drawer and found an ice pick that had been lying there unused for years, and I put it in my bag and drove down to KZZX. I could have used the gun he’d bought me years ago — for protection, he said, when I was here alone — but I saw no reason to shoot him and be caught because of the noise and have to throw away the rest of my life with his... Look at me, Jim. Look at me.”

And now it was his turn to force his glance.

“It was premeditated murder. I knew just what I was going to do. I went there armed with a silent weapon, intending to kill him and get away with it. I knew all about his intermissions, his routine. I lied when I said I went to dressing room 2 and decided not to go in, I did go in, and Tutter was there alone. The moment he saw me he suggested going across the hall. I knew why. Lola Arkwright was in the next dressing room, and he thought I was going to make a scene, and Lola would overhear and find out he’d been living with me all the years he’d told her he was having nothing to do with me. He took me by the arm and ran me across the hall to that unoccupied dressing room, and he shut the door with great care, so that no one would hear us. He did it so fast we were in dressing room 1 before you had time, apparently, to step out of Studio A.”

“And you waited till Tutter turned around, and you took the ice pick out of your bag, and you let him have it — face to face.” It came out in a croak, and he cleared his throat.

Nancy nodded. “Face to face, Jim. I wanted him to know that he couldn’t throw a woman’s life away as if she were an old hat — not without paying for it, and I don’t mean money. I told the truth about not knowing anything about his finances. I still don’t, beyond what his lawyer told me over the weekend... No, Jim, let me finish.

“I’d wiped the handle clean before I left home. After that I kept my gloves on. When he was lying on the floor I wrapped his hand around the ice pick in the normal way. It... wouldn’t keep holding on.” For the first time her voice faltered; but it was only for a moment. “I did want it to look like suicide, Jim. I saw no reason why I — or anyone else, for that matter — should have to pay for his worthless life.”

“When did you go back to the studio?” he muttered.

“It must have been just seconds before you did; I’d purposely waited in room 1 till the ten minutes of the intermission were almost over. I was lucky, wasn’t I? Nobody saw me, coming or going, in all that corridor traffic.” She smiled. “And neither of us would be in this position today if that girl fan of Tutter’s hadn’t had to go to the toilet. Which reminds me. Does your honesty extend to expressing your real intentions when most people say, ‘Excuse me, I have to go wash my hands’?” She rose from the chair and came to him, and, very lightly, pressed her lips to his forehead. “Excuse me, Jim, I have to go wash my hands.”

Before he could touch her, or rise, she was going quickly to her bedroom. She turned in the bedroom doorway to smile at him, and then she went in and closed the door.

Layton sat limply, like an old man. What was he to do now?

I can say nothing, nothing at all, about this, he thought. To anyone. Neither Nora nor Wayne had the faintest suspicion of the significance of the girl’s revelation of yesterday.

The case is closed. It’s suicide. The coroner’s jury said so. Closed. And he’s buried.

And then I get to marry the girl, not quite as in the movies. Because I want her, I have need of her, I have need of her love and of mine. And would we live happily ever after...?

He tried to clear his head, shaking it as if there were water in his ears. Happily ever after... Me? Knowing I had, by an act of dishonest omission, sanctioned the taking of a human life...? knowing that the hand I kissed, the hand that caressed me, even though with truest tenderness and deepest love, had plunged a steel blade into a living heart?

Maybe if they knew — maybe if she were tried and at her trial the people on the jury were made to understand what had driven her to murder... Layton shook his head. It was, as she said, cold-blooded, premeditated murder. She didn’t have a chance.

And she knew it.

“And I know it,” Layton said aloud, startling himself. And I know it he said in silence.

Yet how can I turn her in? How can mine be the voice that sends the message of her guilt and pronounces the sentence of her doom over the lines strung between Chapter Drive and downtown Los Angeles? What after all, has she done to have to die for it — at my hand?

She’s committed murder.

What price honesty now?

Layton you honest man, you. Is your honesty so damn precious to you...?

Almost he came to a decision.

Almost.

But trembling on the brink, he heard a sound.

It was the report of a gun, and it came from beyond the bedroom door.

Layton found her on the bed. She had placed the muzzle of a pistol in her mouth and squeezed the trigger. What he saw, on the pillow, on the headboard, on the bed itself, made him totter into the bathroom and fall to his knees over the bowl.

It was Sergeant Trimble, a very long time later, who came up to Layton’s apartment and walked in without knocking and over to where Layton was lying in the dark staring up at nothing, and who said to Layton: “I found this under the pillow where she shot herself. It’s addressed to you, Jim. I have a photostat for the files — it’s okay. You keep this.”

Layton felt something flutter onto his chest.

After a moment Sergeant Trimble went away.

Layton stirred. He had been lying there for so long that his muscles felt atrophied. He stretched; his joints sounded like rusty door hinges.

His hand went groping to his chest. He found it.

Then he got up from the couch and fumbled around in the dark until he located the light switch.

He sank into a chair, blinking at it.

It was a sheet of notepaper of fine quality but an aged look, as if it had been bought a long time ago. There was an embossed NK in gold in the upper left corner, but she had taken her pen and slashed up and down and across it several times.

The letter said: