Leave Her to Hell

4

From street level I went up two shallow steps into a spacious hall. The floor was carpeted. The walls were paneled with dark and lustrous walnut. At the far end of the hall, a broad sweep of stairs ascended. To my right as I entered was the dining room. The floor was carpeted in there also, and the walls were also walnut-paneled. Tables were covered with snowy cloths and set with shining silver. A few early diners were dining. The string quartet was playing something softly that I remembered by sound and remembered after a moment by name. “Stars in My Eyes,” by Fritz Kreisler. A very pretty tune.

I looked right. A cocktail lounge was over that way, beyond a wide entrance and down a step. A number of people were drinking cocktails. There was no music. I recognized a martini, which was all right, a manhattan, which was better, and an alexander, which you can have. Everything was very elegant, very sedate. Maybe someone saw me, maybe not. No one spoke to me or tried to stop me. I walked down the hall and up the stairs.

The carpet went up with me, but the walnut stayed below. The hall upstairs ran a gauntlet of closed doors recessed in plaster. It was nice plaster, though, rough-textured and painted a nice shade of brown. Cinnamon or nutmeg or one of the names that brown acquires when it becomes a decorator color. It was too early for the games, and the rooms behind the doors were quiet. All, that is, except the last room behind the last door, which was the private room of Silas Lawler. Someone in there was playing a piano. A Chopin waltz was being played. I thought at first it was a recording, but then I decided it wasn’t. It was good, but not good enough.

I opened the door softly and stepped inside and closed the door behind me. It was Silas Lawler himself at the piano. He turned his face toward me, but his eyes had the kind of blind glaze that the eyes of a man may have when he is listening to good music or looking at his mistress or thinking of something a long way off. A pretty girl was sitting in a deep chair on the back of her neck. She had short black hair and smoky eyes and a small red petulant mouth. She was facing the door and me directly, and her eyes moved over me lazily without interest. Otherwise, she did not move in the slightest, and she did not speak.

Lawler finished the Chopin waltz, and the girl said, “That was nice, Lover.” She moved nothing but her lips, in shaping the words, and her eyes, which she rolled toward him in her head. She didn’t sound as if she meant what she said, and Lawler didn’t look as if he believed her. He didn’t even look as if he heard her. He was still staring at me, and the glaze was dissolving in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Percy Hand,” I said. “We’ve met.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I remember you. Don’t you believe in knocking?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt the music. I like Chopin.”

“Do you? It’s better when it’s played right.”

“You play it fine. I thought at first it was Brailowsky.”

“If you thought it was Brailowsky, you’ve never heard him.”

“I’ve heard him, all right. I went to a concert once. I’ve got a couple records.”

“In that case, you’ve got no ear for music. Brailowsky and I don’t sound alike.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it was just the shock of hearing you play at all. I never figured Silas Lawler for a pianist.”

“I was a deprived kid. I had secret hungers. I made some money and took lessons.”

“So was I. So had I. I didn’t.”

“Make money or take lessons?”

“Both.”

“You can see he’s poor,” the girl said. “He wears ready-made suits.”

“Botany 500,” I said. “Sixty-five bucks.”

Lawler looked at her levelly across the grand. I could have sworn that there was an expression of distaste on his face. The deprived kid business was on the level, I thought. He remembered the time. He didn’t like people who made cracks about the poor.

“This is Robin Robbins,” he said carefully. “She’s pretty, but she’s got no manners. That isn’t her real name, by the way. She didn’t think the one she had was good enough. The man you’re trying to insult, honey, is Percy Hand, a fairly good private detective.”

“He looks like Jack Palance,” she said.

“Jack Palance is ugly,” I said. “God, he’s ugly.”

“So are you,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“In a nice way,” she said. “Jack Palance is ugly in a nice way, and so are you. I don’t really care if you’re poor.”

“Just as long as you’re good in bed,” Lawler said. “Come over here.”

I walked over and stood beside the piano. Now I could see the girl only by looking over my shoulder. Instead, I looked down at Lawler. His face was clean shaven and square. He was neither tall nor fat, but he must have weighed two hundred. His hands rested quietly on the piano keys. They looked like chunks of stone.

“Here I am,” I said. “Why?”

“I want to be able to reach you in case you haven’t got a good reason for busting in here.”

“I’ve got a reason. You tell me if it’s good.”

“I’ll let you know. One way or another.”

“I want to talk about a couple of people you know. Or knew. Your brother and Constance Markley.”

He didn’t budge. His face stayed still, his body stayed still, the hands on the keys stayed still as stone.

“It’s lousy. I’d be bored to death.”

“Is that so? I’m beginning to get real interested in them.”

“That’s your mistake. While we’re on mistakes, I’ll point out another. He isn’t my brother. Not even step-brother. Foster brother.”

“That makes it less intimate, I admit. Not quite impersonal, though. Wouldn’t you like to know where he is? How he is? Or maybe you already know.”

“I don’t. I don’t want to.”

“Well, I never heard the like. A man’s wife disappears. He doesn’t care. A man’s foster brother disappears. He doesn’t care. The indifference fascinates me.”

“Let me figure this.” His left hand suddenly struck a bass chord and dropped off the keys into his lap. The sound waves lingered, faded, died. “I’ve got a sluggish mind, and I think slow. Regis and Constance ran away. You’re a private detective. Could it be you’re trying to make yourself a case?”

“I’m not making any case. The case is made. I’m just working on it.”

“Take my advice. Don’t. Drop it. Forget it. It isn’t worth your time.”

“My time’s worth twenty-five dollars a day and expenses. That’s what I’m getting paid.”

“Who’s paying?”

“Sorry. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“It’s not enough.”

“I get by on it.”

“Not enough to pay a hospital bill, I mean. Or the price of a funeral, even.”

The girl stood up suddenly and stretched. She made a soft mewing sound, like a cat. I turned my head and watched her over my shoulder. Her breasts thrust out against her dress, her spread thighs strained against her tight skirt.

“I think I’ll go away somewhere,” she said. “I abhor violence.”

“You do that, honey,” Silas Lawler said.

She walked across to the door, and she walked pretty well. She had nice legs that moved nicely. You could follow the lines of her behind in the tight skirt. I’d have been more impressed if I hadn’t seen Faith Salem lying in the sun. At the door, before going out, she paused and looked back at me and grinned.

“You couldn’t hurt his face much,” she said. “You could change it, but you couldn’t hurt it.”

She was gone, and I said, “Lovely thing. Is it yours?”

“Now and then.” He shrugged. “If you’re interested, I won’t be offended.”

“I’m not. Besides, I’m too ugly. Were you threatening me a moment ago?”

“About the hospital, yes. About the funeral, no. It wouldn’t be necessary.”

“You never can tell. I get tired of living sometimes.”

“You’d get tireder of being dead.”

“That could be. The way I hear it explained, it sounds pretty dull.”

“You’re a pretty sharp guy, Hand. You’ve got a nose for what’s phony. I’m surprised a guy like you wouldn’t smell a phony case.”

“I won’t say I haven’t. I’m open to conviction.”

“All right. Regis and Constance had a real fire going. It didn’t grow, it was just there in both of them at first sight. First sight was right here. Downstairs in the lounge. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. Regis was there, and Constance was there, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone and everything. They got in bed, and whatever they had survived. They ran away together, that’s all. Why don’t you leave it alone?”

“You make it sound so simple. I can’t help thinking, though, that running away’s one thing, disappearing’s another. You see the difference?”

“I see. It wouldn’t seem so strange if you’d know the woman. Constance, I mean. She’d had a bad time. She was sad, lost, looking for a way to somewhere. You get me? She was a real lady, but she had queer ideas. When she left, she wanted to leave it all, including herself. It’s pathetic when you stop to think about it.”

“I get the same picture everywhere. The same idea. I’m beginning to believe it. I’m skeptical about Regis, though. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“He wasn’t. Not before he met Constance. Before he met her, he was a charming, no-good bastard. But then he met her, and he changed. Queer. You wouldn’t have thought she’d have appealed to him, but she did. He’d have done anything she wanted. Very queer.”

“Yeah. Queer and corny.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking so. You’d have to see it to believe it.”

“Did Regis have an interest in this restaurant?”

“Regis didn’t have a pot. Just what I gave him. Spending money.”

“What did they use for cash when they left? What are they using now? And don’t feed me any more corn. You don’t live on love. Some people get a job and live in a cottage, but not Regis and Constance. Everything they were and did is against it.”

The fingers of his right hand moved up the keys. It was remarkable how lightly that chunk of rock moved. The thin sound of the short scale lasted no longer than a few seconds. The right had joined the left in his lap.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I don’t know why. What I ought to do is throw you out of here. Anyhow, Regis had cash. Enough for a lifetime in the right place. See that picture over there? It’s a copy of a Rembrandt. Behind it there’s a safe. Regis knew the combination. The night he went away, I had seventy-five grand in it. Regis took it.”

“That’s a lot of cash to have in a safe behind a picture.”

“I had it for a purpose. Never mind what.”

“You let him get away with it? You didn’t try to recover it?”

“No. To tell the truth, I was relieved. I always felt an obligation toward him because of the woman whose lousy kid he was. Now the obligation is wiped out. We’re quits.” He lifted both hands and replaced them gently on the keys of the piano. There was not the slightest sound from the wires inside. “Besides, I figured it was partly for her. For Constance. I liked her. I hope she’s happier than she ever was.”

I started to refer again to corn, but I thought better of it. Then I thought that it would probably be a good time to leave, and I turned and went as far as the door.

“Hand,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Forget it. Drop it. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

I opened the door and went out. After three steps in the hall, I heard the piano. What I heard from it was something else by Chopin.