Do Evil In Return

8

She had a late dinner at home alone. The house was dead and quiet. She put some records on the Capehart to drive away the silence, but the silence stayed in ambush underneath the music waiting to spring at her between records.

She hadn’t heard from Lewis all day. (Such a long day, she thought. It seems a week since I had breakfast with Miss Schiller this morning and saw Tiddles in his green suit at the police station... A long day for me, and a long night for Violet, a long, dark forever... Don’t think, don’t think about it. It wasn’t your fault.)

Lewis always phoned her once or twice during the afternoon. They didn’t talk long — they were both busy — but the calls reassured Charlotte. They made her feel that she was loved, that she wasn’t just playing around with a married man; she was in love and so was Lewis, and it was their bad luck that he was already married when they met. She hadn’t called him at his house for a long time; she had to look up the number in the telephone directory before she dialed.

Lewis answered, sounding falsely genial as he always did before he identified a caller. It was part of his public personality. “Hello. This is Lewis Ballard.”

Charlotte spoke fast “I want to see you. Can you come over?”

“Sorry, you must have the wrong number.”

“Does that mean you can’t?”

“That’s right. This is 5-5919.”

“Darling — Lewis, I...”

But he’d already hung up.

It wasn’t his fault, she thought. He had to hang up; Gwen was there listening. Even so she felt rejected, and a little cheap. “Sorry, you must have the wrong number, toots.” “Maybe I have, bud.” She went over and sat in Lewis’ chair, holding the palms of her hands over her eyes.

The front door was still open, as she’d left it to air out the house after she’d cooked dinner, and the wind slid across the floor and chilled her legs.

She went to the door to close it. Two men were coming through the gate into the walled garden. The taller one bolted the gate carefully behind him and wiped his hands on his trousers. The other man was small. He moved through the shadows with furtive delicacy like an elf and his ears stuck out from his red baseball cap, pale enormous blobs of wax silhouetted against the dark trees.

He flitted across the flagstones towards the light of the open door, a moth of a man. It was too late to dose the door. Too late and too futile. The little man could fly through a window, drop from a chimney, crawl out of a crack and scamper through an evil dream.

“Remember me? Eh?”

“You’re Mr. Voss.”

“Sure, that’s right.” He jerked his thumb towards his companion. Charlotte saw that both men were wearing crudely sewn mourning bands on their sleeves. “This here’s my pal, Eddie O’Gorman.”

“I’ve seen Mr. O’Gorman before.”

O’Gorman stepped into the circle of light. Though he was still young his face was a record of violence and neglect, the nose broken, the left ear a mash of tissue, the cheeks pitted with acne scars.

He held his fists clenched against his heavy thighs. “You seen me where?”

“At Mr. Voss’s house. You were watching me through the rails of the banister.”

“Yeah? What’s so wrong about...”

“Now, now, Eddie,” Voss said and turned to Charlotte. “Poor Eddie’s upset. He got bad news today, real bad. Didn’t you, Eddie?”

“Yeah.” Eddie touched the mourning band on his sleeve with a convulsive gesture, as if he wanted to rip it off.

“His wife died,” Voss said. “Killed herself. But maybe you already heard about Violet.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Poor little Violet. Who’d of thought she’d of done it the way she did? It came as a terrible shock to Eddie. Didn’t it, Eddie?”

“Sure.”

Voss explained to Charlotte, “He don’t talk much anyway, don’t talk at all when he’s grieving, he gets speechless, he...”

“What do you want?” Charlotte said. “Why are you here?”

He looked a little injured by her abruptness. “Well, I figured, me and Eddie figured, that maybe you hadn’t heard about Violet, and being you were so interested in her you’d like to know before you read about it in the newspaper.”

“Well, you’ve told me. Thanks, and good night.”

“Now wait a minute.” Voss’s face creased in a malevolent little pout. “Now that’s no way to treat a couple mourners. Is it, Eddie?”

Eddie coughed, holding one hand over his chest. “We could talk better inside. This night air ain’t so good for my bronichal tubes.”

“It won’t kill you,” Charlotte said. “It’s the same as day air.”

“Say, you’re a doctor. Say, what’s it mean when you get up in the morning and cough and cough and then maybe an hour later you’re O.K. again? Do you think that’s serious?”

She started at him through the screen door. This was Violet’s husband. “He hit me with a lamp,” Violet had said... “He’d take me back, he likes to have me around, somebody to bully.” She glanced at the telephone ten feet away, hoping it would ring so that she could establish contact with someone. It didn’t ring, and she was afraid to go over and pick it up; the action might precipitate trouble.

“Well?” Eddie scowled. “Is it serious? You think maybe I’m a lunger?” His mouth twitched nervously at one corner. Eddie was scared to death, and violence was the denial of his fears.

“No,” Charlotte said. “The cough is probably caused by a post-nasal drip. That is, when you’re sleeping phlegm accumulates at the back of your nose and drips into your throat. In the morning you cough it up.”

“What’s that word again, what I got?”

“Post-nasal drip.”

“How about that. Say, Voss, this dame knows her stuff, takes one look at me and says post-nasal drip, just like that.”

“Oh, shut up,” Voss said. “For Christ’s sake I got symptoms, too, only I don’t yap about them when there’s business to be done.”

Charlotte repeated, “Business?”

“Not business, exactly. You see, poor Violet didn’t have many friends, only Eddie and me and the wife, and you. Violet was one swell kid, she don’t deserve to have a pauper’s funeral, no flowers or nothing. Funerals come high nowadays. I was around pricing them this afternoon, and boy, those undertakers are sure raking in the coin. Though some of those caskets were real beautiful. Weren’t they, Eddie?”

“Sure.”

“We thought of a white satin casket with maybe a great big horseshoe made of purple violets.”

“Gee,” Eddie said, “that’d be pretty.” He touched his nose tenderly. He felt swell. Here, all this time he’d been worried about being a lunger and it was just his post-nasal drip.

“So,” Voss said, “that’s why Eddie and me came here. We figured Violet had a few friends, maybe we’d take up a little collection, buy a couple wreaths, stuff like that.”

“How much?” Charlotte said flatly.

“I hate to think about cold cash, with Violet where she is. Still” — he shrugged — “that’s what makes the world go round. Who am I to try stopping it?”

“How much?”

“Say $300”

There was a long silence before Charlotte spoke. “That would buy a great many wreaths.”

“Sure, but consider the casket.”

“I haven’t got three hundred dollars.”

“You can get it. You have a friend.”

“I have quite a few friends.”

“One special friend, though.”

“Several.”

“One very special.”

“Stop it,” Charlotte cried. “You must be crazy to think I...”

“Three hundred dollars wouldn’t mean a thing to him. Or to you. Think of poor Violet.”

“I only saw the girl once in my life.”

“But you helped kill her,” Voss said, quite pleasantly. “She came home yesterday and she says, I’ve been to the doctor only she won’t help me, I wish I was dead.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Charlotte said, trying to keep her voice steady. “This sounds like extortion.”

“Now wait a minute, that’s a nasty word. Ain’t it, Eddie?”

“It sure is. I don’t like it.”

Voss fingered the mourning band on his sleeve. “We came here as Violet’s friends because we wanted to give her a good send-off. Christ, we even got to pay a minister. How far do you think three hundred dollars will go?”

“I don’t know or care.”

“Don’t act so snotty or you will. You’ll end up caring plenty.” He turned to Eddie. “Extortion, she says. How about that?”

“How about it, that’s what I say.”

A mockingbird began to chatter from his perch on the lemon tree, abusing the invaders.

“You’d both better go home,” Charlotte said, “and start thinking up some new angles.”

“We don’t have to,” Voss said. “The angles are all there, and they ain’t nice, lady, they ain’t nice at all.”

“You’re very vague.”

“I don’t have to be vague. I can spell it out for you in straight ABC’s. There’s you, y-o-u, and there’s him, B-a-l-l-a-r-d. And then there’s my poor little Violet. Quite a threesome, eh? Eh?”

“Be more explicit,” Charlotte said. “You want me to pay you three hundred dollars because of Mr. Ballard and because you think I’m partly responsible for Violet’s suicide. Is that right?”

“Maybe. Maybe you haven’t figured the angles, though.”

“What angles?”

“Think about it.” Voss turned to his companion. “Come on, Eddie.”

“But she didn’t give us the money,” Eddie protested. “We didn’t get the three hundred...”

“You heard the lady. She don’t want to give us the money.”

“You said she would.”

“She will. She’s got to have time to figure, is all. Maybe she’s a little slow in the head. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait,” Charlotte said. She was assailed by an obscure and terrifying feeling that the little moth of a man was threatening to eat away the fabric of her life. Already she felt naked, unprotected.

Voss turned his indeterminate eyes on her, squinting against the light that shone above the door. “You changed your mind?”

“No.” She reached her decision suddenly. “I’ve had enough of this. Get out of here or I’ll call the police.”

Eddie began to edge towards the steps, but Voss still faced her: “I don’t think so. You pore over what I said, and when you change your mind you know where I live. Only you better make it soon. I got lots of important business on the fire, see? Maybe I don’t look it but I’m a big shot, I’m a very important...”

“You’re a cheap crook,” Charlotte said. “Get out of here.”

She slammed and bolted the door and stood with her back against it until she heard the squeaking of the gate as it opened and closed again. Then she picked up the phone and dialed police headquarters. She acted on impulse, without planning what she would say or thinking of the consequences.

“Police headquarters. Valerio speaking.”

“H... hello?”

“What’s your trouble?”

“I need some kind of — protection.”

There was a voice in the background, a whining voice made harsh by whisky — “lost every damn cent of it, and then comes crying to me about it...”

“Oh, can it for a minute,” Valerio said. “I’m talking on the phone. Hello? What’s your name and address?”

“Charl...” Her throat constricted, pressing back the words: Charlotte Keating, 1026 Mountain Drive. I’m being blackmailed. The men involved are potentially dangerous, they should be arrested. No, I can’t give evidence. No, I can’t tell you why I’m being blackmailed, but it’s nothing criminal, nothing bad. I’ve been seeing a married man...

She could picture the two of them grinning knowingly if she told them, Valerio and the man with the whine, snickering together: “Seeing a married man, that’s a hot one, that’s a lulu...”

“I didn’t get the name,” Valerio said.

She hung up quietly.

She switched on the floodlights in the yard and went out to her car.