Leave Her to Hell

12

Since I was not going to Amity that day, I decided that I might as well run out to Fat Albert’s county seat. It was the middle of the afternoon when I got there, and it was like coming home. I had, as I’d told Lud Anderson, been born there, and I had lived there until I was old enough to move away. Afterward, until my mother and the old man were dead and buried, I had gone back now and then for a few hours or a day; but now I hardly ever went if it could be avoided, and I was saddened and depressed when it couldn’t and I did. The reason for this, I think, was that the town reminded me too clearly of what a particular kid there had planned largely to do, and of how little of it had been done by a particular man.

The county jail was on the east side of town and sat in the middle of a square block of blue grass and crab grass and oaks and maples and catalpa trees. There were lots of catalpa trees in the town. Long green beans come on them in the spring, and in the summer the beans ripen and dry and turn black. They burn as well as a cigarette or a cigar, only faster and hotter; and they give off, when drawn upon, great and satisfying clouds of hot, oily smoke. I guess I smoked, when I was a kid, at least a thousand altogether.

I parked on one side of the square and walked up across the front yard beneath the oaks and maples and catalpas to the jail. A couple of trusties were working in the yard. One of them was pushing a mower, and the other was trimming along the front walk with a pair of grass clippers. Inside the building, a central hall ran straight ahead for about twenty-five feet and terminated at a steel grill. There were cells at the back, I knew, and a flight of narrow stairs ascended to a second floor, where there were more cells. There were a couple of doors on the left side of the hall. One was closed and one was open, and I went through the open one into a littered office.

Fat Albert was standing beside a water cooler with a paper cup in his hand. He had shed his coat and was wearing a faded blue shirt and bright yellow tie. The tie had been loosened and the collar of the shirt opened to free the particular chin it entrapped when fastened. Although it was not a hot day, the shirt was soaked with sweat beneath the arms and around the open collar and under the heavy galluses that crossed it to suspended seersucker pants, and the pants were settled comfortably under the maximum bulge of a monstrous belly. I had known Fat Albert in the old days, and he had been fat enough then to deserve the name, but he had continued to grow more gross by the year until now, I judged, he must surely weigh well over three hundred pounds and possibly closer to four. His eyes were hardly more than twin glitters in an encroachment of flesh.

“Hello, son,” he said. “Come on in. You want a drink of water?”

“No, thanks.”

He moved over to a desk and sank into a chair that must have been specially made, or at least enlarged and reinforced. His movement, for a man so monstrous, was incredibly easy and light.

“Sit down,” he said. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

I sat in the chair he indicated and held my hat in my lap.

“I guess you don’t remember me,” I said.

“Can’t say I do.”

“Percy Hand. Miller Hand’s kid.”

“Well, Jesus Christ,” he said. “Didn’t I have you in jail once for swimming naked in the creek behind the country club?”

“That’s right,” I said. “You did.”

“I remember. I was a deputy at the time. Jailed half a dozen of you kids that day.” His laugh was an asthmatic wheeze. “God-damn women used to sit on the veranda of the club house and watch you kids swim naked until they got tired of it, then they’d call here and want us to put you in jail for indecent exposure or something. I finally had to do it to get them off my back.”

“We all understood how it was. You only kept us a couple of hours.”

“Sure. You can’t keep a kid in jail for swimming naked in a creek. I tried to tell those God-damn women that, but they wouldn’t listen to reason.” He laughed again and peered at me with his little twin glitters. “Didn’t I hear that you’re a private dick?”

“I try to be.”

“Thought so. That’s what I heard. Why the hell would anyone become a private dick?”

“I don’t know. I’ve often asked myself the same question.”

“Any money in it?”

“It’s a living.”

“I suppose you run into lots of interesting stuff.”

“Once in a while.”

“I mean divorce cases. Stuff like that.”

“I don’t take divorce cases.”

“Murder?”

“Not very often. Mostly routine investigations. Pretty dull on the whole.”

“That’s not the way it is in the books.”

“I know. I read the books myself to see how it ought to be.”

He leaned back in the massive chair and laced his fingers in front of his belly. His arms, in accomplishing this, were extended almost to their limit. Staring at me, he shook his head slowly from side to side and sucked his lips audibly.

“Miller Hand’s kid,” he said. “I never dreamed you’d turn into a private dick.”

“Neither did I.”

“You here on business or just for old time’s sake?”

“A little of both.”

“What’s the business?”

“A hit-and-run accident that happened in your county. I wonder if you can tell me anything about it.”

“Hit-and-run? Haven’t had one for quite a time. When did it happen?”

I gave him the exact date and watched him close his eyes and suck his lips and cogitate.

“The victim was a woman named Spatter,” I said. “She was killed, and the driver was never found.”

He raised his lids, exposing the glitters, and blew moist air between his lips. I had the notion that a mountain of flesh was about to collapse in front of me.

“It’s coming back to me. The way it looked, this Spatter woman started across the highway just below the crest of a rise. Car came over the rise and hit her. Probably killed her instantly. You’re right about no one ever finding the driver. I tried and the troopers tried, but it wasn’t any good. No witness, no evidence, nothing at all we could ever get hold of. Why you interested?”

“I’m not sure. There seems to be a connection with someone else I’m interested in.”

“You think you may know who the driver was?”

“No. Not that. I guess that’s something we’ll never know.”

“You can’t tell. It might come sooner or later. If it does, though, it’ll be plain good luck and nothing else. The guilty guy may get drunk and talk too much in a bar. It’s happened before. Someone who knows who he is and what he did may get sore for some reason and squeal. That’s happened before too.”

“I admit it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.”

“You’re right. It’s not likely.”

“You never did learn anything that wasn’t published, then? Some bit of evidence that wasn’t enough for a charge but still might be significant?”

“No. Not a thing. In my opinion, you’re at dead end fooling around with that old case. Like I said, it’ll be plain good luck if it’s ever solved.”

“I don’t doubt it. I wasn’t really expecting to learn anything new.”

“In that case, let’s forget the business and go have a cold beer for old time’s sake. I been owing you one for a long time for those two hours I kept you in jail.”

“A cold beer sounds good,” I said.

We drove in my car to a neighborhood tavern and took turns buying beers while we talked old times, and then I took him back to the jail and left him and drove on alone to the city, and it was about six when I got there, and about seven when I got home after having a steak in a steak house.

The room was neat and lonely. The bed was made, and the litter was cleared, and the room was neat and lonely.

Jim Beam was on the dresser, and I poured a couple of fingers and drank them. There was a note on the dresser beside Jim, and I read it. I left some coffee in the pot in case you might come back and want it, the note said. I went over to the hot plate and looked in the pot, and the cold coffee was there. I turned on the plate and waited, and pretty soon the coffee began to get hot and smell like old coffee reheated. I didn’t really want any of it, but I drank a cup for the principle of the thing. It was getting dark, but I didn’t turn on a light. I don’t know that I’ve ever sat by myself in a neater and lonelier room.

After a while I turned on a light and consulted the telephone directory to see if Robin had a listed number. She had one, and I dialed it, and she answered after the phone had rung three times at her end.

“Hello,” she said.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said.

“Whom did you want?” she said.

“I’m satisfied with what I’ve got,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said. “You have a wrong number.”

The line went dead, and I hung up and sat down on the edge of the bed, which she had not folded into the wall after making, and it seemed to me that one of two things was true. Either she had not wanted to talk in the hearing of someone who was present, or the night before had turned sour in the day after, and the polite pretension was established that the night had never been. I hoped it was the former, but I had a depressed feeling in the neat and lonely room that it was the latter, and pretty soon I got up to see what two more fingers of Jim Beam could do about the feeling.

It didn’t do much. After drinking it and waiting for the lift that didn’t occur, I took off my shoes and put out the light and lay down on my back on the bed in the darkness. She was only, I thought, a classy little tramp who shouldn’t matter much to anyone on earth, just as Faith Salem was only a slightly classier tramp in the sun or out of it, and a man was much better off to make his own coffee and his own bed and to lie alone and uncommitted in his own neat and lonely room. It was then about seven-thirty, an hour and a half before I had to be in my office in faith with Colly, and I guess it was about eight, after a fine half hour of wonderful rationalizing, when the telephone rang and I answered it.

“Hello, ugly,” Robin said.

“Whom did you want?” I said. “I think you have a wrong number.”

“Don’t be silly. I had to say that because Silas was here.”

“It occurred to me that he was. On the other hand, I considered the possibility that maybe you’d decided it wouldn’t develop. I was lying here thinking about it when you called.”

“I thought you were going to Amity.”

“I thought I was too, but something kept getting in the way.”

“What was it?”

“Several things. I got fired and rehired, and then I went to see a couple of people about an accident, and finally I got an honest and simple job for an hour tonight.”

“I don’t believe I quite understand all this.”

“Neither do I, honey. I’m just moving along with things, and I don’t have much of an idea where, if anywhere, I’ll wind up.”

“Are you still going to Amity?”

“Tomorrow, if nothing else gets in the way.”

“I’m sorry I can’t come to see you tonight, but it’s impossible.”

“All right. I’ll hang onto the raincheck.”

“You do that. Did you like the way I left your room?”

“It was very neat and empty. Do you always leave a room so empty?”

“I have a feeling that you’ve just paid me a great compliment. Did you?”

“I tried.”

“You know something? I’m beginning to like you quite a lot. You’re ugly and comfortable and sentimental and capable at times of being exciting. I hope nothing unfortunate happens to you as a result of this case you’re on. I think I’d regret it.”

“No more than I.”

“Well, you’ll have to be careful, that’s all. Is Darcy still following you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spotted him.”

“It isn’t likely that you would. Darcy’s competent. He’s good at anything he undertakes.”

“I have evidence of Darcy’s competence, and I’ve already conceded it.”

“Maybe you’d better give up.”

“I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“Didn’t Silas offer you five grand? It would make you not so poor, and I’d enjoy helping you spend it.”

“Don’t be so mercenary, honey. The best things in life are free.”

“If you’re thinking about what I think you’re thinking about, it might not be as free as you’re thinking it is.”

“That’s a pretty complex statement, but I get the idea.”

“It’s just something to consider. How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. As long as it takes.”

“What takes?”

“I don’t know that, either. Whatever it is.”

“Will you call me when you get back?”

“The first fair day.”

“All right. Good-bye, ugly.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

I hung up and lay down on my back on the bed again. I felt much better than I had, and the room, although still neat, did not seem so lonely. I kept on lying there with my mind pleasantly still and stagnate and unconcerned with pressing problems, and when it got to be eight-thirty I put on my shoes and went to the office.