Forget-Me-Not Killer

Chapter One Out of the World

Waking again was like swimming in a sea of dull pain. My head felt hot, my limbs heavy. I tried to open my eyes, and couldn’t. For a moment it struck me only as being queer. Then I realized my face and head were heavily bandaged. I could feel the strips of gauze by raising my leaden hands and touching the cloth with my fingertips.

I had no way of knowing whether it was night or day, winter or summer. I hadn’t the least idea of where I was. I had come from — where? Slowly, a horrible coldness started waving up over me, shaking me so that I wanted to scream.

In the name of mercy, who was I?

I was lying on a bed. I heard the springs creak as I tried to rear up, to tear the bandages from my face in sudden terror. Two hands gripped my shoulders, forcing me back. A voice called:

“Doctor Maddigan! Doctor Maddigan, please!”

The sound that followed the woman’s crisp, professional voice was that of softly clicking heels. Then other hands were added to the woman’s, pushing me against the mattress.

“Let’s behave now, Mr. Smith!” a man’s voice commanded.

“Where am I?” I said hoarsely, my voice muffled by the bandages.

“In Asbury Hospital. I’m Doctor Maddigan, and Miss Phillips, your nurse, is right beside you in case you want anything. There is really no reason for you to begin acting up again.”

“Again?”

“Almost every time you awake. You don’t remember? Well, that isn’t uncommon. Lie quietly and it will all come back to you. Physically, you’re just about ready for discharge, and I’m glad to say this waking is the most normal so far.”

“But I...” I flinched a little as I felt a needle bite my arm. Gasping, I tried to get this Doctor Maddigan to talk to me, to answer my questions. But he uttered only soothing nothings, and gradually I felt the drug taking effect, dragging me back into that awful maw of blackness. I wanted to scream again. This clammy coldness that gripped me seemed as if it would never leave me.

“Quiet now, Mr. Smith... that’s it... it’ll all come back... come back...”

When I woke again, I had the feeling I had been dreaming. I lay in sheets wet from the sweat of my body and tried to remember the dream. But it stayed just beyond the edge of my mind. Then, as I became fully conscious, the terror returned greater than ever, for I knew it was no dream I was trying to recall. It was my past. It was I! That was it — I was trying to remember me!

Smith, they had said. Doctor Maddigan and Miss Phillips. Asbury Hospital. At least my mind would function. I could remember that much of it, the last awakening. But behind that awakening was a thick, black curtain that I could not penetrate. I — as I — had never existed!

I tried to keep a strong grip on myself. I lined up all the facts I did know. The name was Smith. I had obviously been in an accident of some kind, evidenced by bandages and hospital. I knew I spoke English. My mind seized on the fact that I knew somehow that Asbury Hospital was in the city of Wiltonville.

Beyond that, memory was a myriad of tantalizing wraiths. Like a terrier, my mind pursued each memory as it boiled over into my consciousness; then memory would flee down the rathole of forgetfulness.

The third awakening found me calmer, conditioned to the fact that I remembered nothing. It also found me feeling much stronger, and I knew even before I touched my face or opened my eyes that the bandages were gone.

“Hello, darling!”

I had only to turn my head a little to see her. She was standing right beside the bed. Tall, sleek, a creature with cool blue eyes, heavy red lips that would pout easily, and blonde hair flowing down to the silver fox neckpiece about her shoulders. Darling, she had said. Smith, I thought, you’re some boy.

From the woman, I shifted my gaze to the man beside her. He was average height. His face was narrow and cold, his eyes a cruel slate-gray. All in all, he looked dapper and deadly, a fit companion for the woman.

He asked her: “Is his new face handsome enough, Marlene?”

“Hasn't he always been?” She gathered my hand up in both of hers, pressed my palm against her cheek. “Darling, it’s been such a fearful time! I was afraid I had lost a husband.”

That cut it. I almost fell off the bed. I was too numbed, staring at her, to speak. She used a long, carmine-tipped finger to trace the outline of my cheek and jaw. “I’ll have to get used to the new face, being near you, darling. They’ve done a good job, don’t you think, Felix?” She looked up at the man.

Felix was regarding me with his slaty eyes. “He doesn’t look much like the old Dash Smith, but you can’t kick, Chief. When the lake cottage burned, it was a miracle the young people in the parked car got you out of the place. This Doctor Maddigan worked a couple of miracles himself, saving your eyes, and giving you any kind of face at all.”

“The face,” I creaked. “Could I see it?”

Marlene held a purse mirror out to me. I took it, stared at the image of me. There were still pink scars of surgery around the jaws and forehead. A rather ordinary face aside from that, but completely strange to me.

Doctor Maddigan came in with the remark that I should rest now. Marlene rose. “Don’t worry about a thing, Dash. Mr. Varden is attending to everything.”

I watched Felix Varden and Marlene go, with a mixture of feeling. One had called me boss, the other — husband...

The next morning I was up and around in my room a little. Doctor Maddigan seemed worried that I still remembered nothing.

“I’m sure everything will come back to you in time. A familiar face, sound, or smell might bring memory flooding back when you least expect it.”

“The newspapers reported the fire I was in?”

“Yes,” he admitted, “there was a great deal in the papers about you.”

“If I should read that?” I suggested.

He pondered a moment. “It might help at that. I’ll have Miss Phillips bring them in.”

That day I got acquainted with myself through a pile of back issues of the local papers. It was all there, the account of the fire that had burned me about the head and shoulders so nearly to a cinder, the rehash of a good bit of my past:

The writer of that piece had a droll sense of humor, implying that the inferno itself had rejected me. It spoke of the crocodile tears of Marlene’s grief when news of her husband’s mishap had reached her. She had been located that night at a swank nightspot in the company of Felix Varden.

I let the papers fall slowly to the floor beside my chair. I sat looking out into the golden sunlight. I tried to feel the personality of Dash Smith. I couldn’t. I knew I did not like the man I had met in the papers. Yet I was that man. Obviously, I was wealthy, feared and reviled. I slumped, feeling tired, wondering why the flames hadn’t finished their job...

My hair still had not begun to grow back the day I left the hospital. Marlene same for me, with Felix Varden. I slipped my arms about her, kissed her because she seemed to expect it. I felt nothing for her. I wondered if this lack of feeling had sent me to that lonely lakeside cabin the night of the fire?

Varden drove a heavy, rich black sedan, obviously mine. We passed through streets that were strange and yet that had an aching familiarity about them. Varden drove with quick, abrupt gestures. I suspected he could move with the speed of a striking snake. I knew he must be one of my most valuable men.

Marlene sat beside me, sheathed in black silk and jewels, chatting about friends who had called, the redecorating she’d done on the apartment, anything that came to her mind. There was an air of tension between the three of us.

Varden stopped the sedan before an ornate apartment building of cream-colored brick. A doorman hopped to the curb, opened the car door. He gave me an odd look, and Marlene whispered:

“It’s Mr. Smith!”

The doorman practically brushed the carpet with his palms to the elevator for us. As we rode up, Varden said.

“Some of our business associates are chaffing to see you. Shall I bring them around tonight?”

“No,” I said, “later. I’m tired.”

I didn’t miss the expression in Varden’s eyes, nor the glance he swapped with Marlene. For the first time I wondered why that fire had started in the lake cottage that night, and what was behind it. Varden’s own innate coldness caused my skin to prickle in his presence. A keen sense of warning told me not to let Felix Varden know how really helpless I was.

I let Marlene precede me into the apartment. There was a long living room, a sunken dining room with windows banked at one end. Like a Hollywood movie set, I thought.

“I’m sure we could all use a drink,” Marlene suggested.

I cut my eyes, helplessly lost, about the room. “You play hostess, Marlene.”

I watched her swing a section of the wall out to form a miniature bar. Felix Varden raised his glass in a toast:

“To the suckers!”

It took me a moment to echo it, and I saw the puzzlement deepen in his eyes. He set his glass down, drink finished. “Look, Chief, you’re acting spooky. You must be all in. I’ll chase myself now, see you tomorrow.”

As soon as the door closed, I turned to look at Marlene. How did Marlene and I live?

But I needn’t have wondered. Turning to her, I found her face was cold, as if she had dropped a mask of pretense.

“I saw the way you were looking at Felix — and he noticed it, too. I suppose now it will start all over again.”

“What will start, Marlene?”

“That’s like you, Dash. Pretending everything is just fine when thoughts are crawling through your mind. I warn you, Dash. I didn’t know what an utter ego-maniac you were when I married you, but I won’t take any more of your persecution.”

I looked at her. “What if I just got out of the whole thing?”

Her full, red lips curled. “Even Dash Smith would know better than that. The organization never lets a man go. Especially a man in your position. You wouldn’t want to land in the bottom of the river, your feet in a tub of cement, any more than I would. But I’m not afraid of what you can do to me any longer! I made up my mind while you were in the hospital that I was through taking your persecution!”

“You got any more to say?”

“No.” Her voice dropped. She sagged in a big club chair, tired, not half so beautiful under her heavy make-up. “That’s all I have to say.”

“Then I think I’ll take a walk,” I said.

I had to get out in the fresh, clean air. I was certainly jammed up in a lot of things I needed to remember. I recalled the newspaper stories about Dash Smith. They said I’d come from the wrong side of the tracks, from Eastland Street. There should be plenty of the familiar over there, perhaps something that would bring back my memory. I climbed in a taxi.

I found nothing to help my memory on Eastland Street, only that tantalizing familiarity of the teeming streets, crowded tenement buildings. I walked all the way to the end of the street, where they had tom down a block of buildings and transformed the area into a small park. I was tired from my long, slow walk down East-land. I sank on a bench, lighting a cigarette and watching squealing kids splash in a wading pool.

A little girl came wobbling down the cement walk on roller skates. She was clutching a doll in the crook of one arm, waving her other frantically to keep her balance. I grinned at her serious efforts.

As she neared my bench, she lost her battle, each skate going in opposite directions at once. She pitched forward full length on the walk.

Rushing to her, I scooped her up and set her on the bench. She was trying hard not to cry. I shook out my handkerchief to wipe the ugly cement-burn on her palm and cheek.

“Thank you so much for helping her! I’ll take her to the Park Supervisor to get the skinned places dressed right away.”

I looked up. A young woman, small, with aburn hair, hazel eyes and a chin that was nice and firm. She bent to the six-year old tot. “Now, hadn’t you better let mommy hold your hand again?”

“But I almost made it, Mommy. Didn’t I, mister?”

“A little more practice, with your mommy’s hand, and I’m sure you’ll skate rings around those other kids.”

“Mister,” she said candidly, “you broke my dolly.”

“Peggy!” her mother said.

I followed Peggy’s glance. There was the doll on the walk where my heel had crushed it in my haste to get to her. I picked up the broken toy.

Peggy’s chin quivered. “I guess I’ll have to have a dolly funeral. She was only learning her ABC’s, too.”

Over her mother’s objections, we three took Peggy’s dolly to the park supervisor for repairs. As we left his office, Peggy looked up at me. “Is he like my daddy, Mommy?”

“Peggy, you should never—”

“My daddy’s gone away for ever and ever, asleep,” Peggy told me gravely.

I shot a glance at the woman walking beside me. Her glance met mine, and there was an old pain and cold anger, a helpless anger she had not learned to accept and live with.

“We’d been married a year,” she said quietly. “Bill had a small shop. He refused to pay protection and—” she spread her hands — “the hired hoodlums of a man called Dash Smith shot Bill down inside — inside his shop.”