Leave Her to Hell

9

I stopped in a package liquor store and bought a fifth of Jim Beam. Carrying Jim, I climbed the stairs to my room. It was a long way up there — a long, long way. My head ached, and my legs ached, and my feet dragged on the treads. I was filled with a kind of ebullient and impotent anger, and the cause of the anger, aside from what had been done to me, was that I had come to a time and condition where I wanted to quit doing what I was committed to do, but I could not quit in good faith with myself. Not that I’m a hero. Not that I’m as ethical as I’ve been accused of being. It is only that I must, in order to live with him compatibly, sustain a certain amount of respect and fondness for Percy Hand.

Holding Jim like a suckling in the cradle of my right arm, I used my left hand to find a key and open the door to my room. Inside in the close and comforting darkness, I leaned against the door and took three long and leisurely breaths. Then I had the sudden feeling that the darkness was breathing too — had stirred and made the slightest sound — and it was as suddenly a threat and no longer a comfort. Straightening, pulling away from the door, I took Jim by the neck and made a club of the suckling. Tensed against the rush of darkness toward me, I felt on the wall with my free hand for a switch.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” Robin Robbins said.

Aware that I had not breathed for a while, I started again.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I said.

“At the moment, I’m standing here by the window looking at you. Before you came, I was standing here at the window looking down into the street.”

“It’s not much of a view. I can’t imagine why you chose it.”

“I didn’t choose it. I was here, and so was it, and we got together. I was thinking. I always like to stand at a window and look down into a street when I’m thinking. It’s somehow helpful. I guess it’s psychological.”

“Psychology again? The last time we got psychological, it ended badly for both of us.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I could tell from the sound and simplicity of her words that she meant them. She said she was sorry, and she was. Not for herself, but for me. Probably, in all her life, she had not wasted as much as an hour feeling sorry for herself. In her tough little psyche, whatever a psyche is, she had sheltered and somehow sustained a sense of fairness according to her notion, the capacity to regret the hurt she did and the trouble she caused. Robin Robbins was becoming a girl I was beginning to like.

“How did you get in here?” I said.

“I persuaded the janitor. By telling him I needed to see you on urgent business, I managed to convince him that I only wanted to spend the night for fun. He came up and unlocked the door for me, and it was clear that he was sympathetic and in favor of people enjoying themselves. He’s very partial to you, incidentally. He thinks you’re a fine fellow, and I think so too.”

“You’re only trying to compensate for getting the hell beat out of me.”

“And me. Not that it matters. It was my fault for being obvious, and I said I was sorry.”

“Forget it. My pride was hurt, but otherwise nothing seriously. When looking out of windows to assist your thinking, do you always do it in the dark?”

“Whenever there is dark to do it in. I like the dark. Do you know that there are other things about the dark besides the look of it? You can feel it too. It feels different from light, and you can close your eyes and feel the difference around you. If I were blind, I would always know whether it was day or night by the feel. It smells different too, and sounds are heard differently in it. Small sounds are bigger, and big sounds are smaller. In the dark it doesn’t matter so much what has happened or what may happen. Nothing matters so much in the dark.”

During the time of our conversation, the pupils of my eyes had dilated in adjustment to the darkness she liked, and I could see her by the window. Beside her and a little beyond her, the glass below the blind was thinly glazed by the soiled light of a lamp in the street below.

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I think it would be better now if we had a light. Do you mind if I turn one on?”

“Wait a minute first. Do you know that you’re being followed?”

“Yes. By you.”

“Not by me. I came here ahead of you and waited. That isn’t following. By someone in a small black sedan. He drove up a minute or two after you did, and he’s now parked across the street. He went to the corner and turned and came back, and I’m sure he was following you, because he got out of the car and stood for a moment looking up at this window, and then he got back into the car. Would you like to see?”

I walked across to the window and looked down into the street, and the small black sedan was there by the curb, as she had said, and I could see in the dense darkness of its interior the tiny glow of a bright coal when someone drew on a cigarette. I could smell Robin Robbins beside me. I could hear her breathing, and I had a notion that I could hear, if I listened intently, the beating of her heart. She smelled good, and the soft sound of her life, which breathing is, was at once comforting and exciting.

“Silas Lawler?” I said.

“No. If Silas were having it done, it would be Darcy doing it. That isn’t Darcy.”

“Who, then?”

“That’s your question. You answer it.”

“Sure. I’m the detective. You keep telling me and telling me. All right, honey. Wait for me. Don’t go away.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not for a while.”

I went back across the room to the door, and I had opened the door and had a foot in the hall before she spoke again.

“Play it cool,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It helps to know you care.” I went on out and downstairs and straight across the street toward the black sedan. I was half way there before the guy behind the wheel awoke to events and jammed his foot on the starter. Fortunately, it was an old car, a little tired, and did not come to life easily. By the time the engine had caught fire, I had jerked open the door and snatched the ignition key. The engine died with a cough and a twitch of a piston, as if dying were welcome and better than living. The guy behind the wheel cursed and slapped at the wrist of the hand that held the key. His nails raked flesh.

“What the hell!” he said.

I reached in and grabbed his tie and twisted and pulled, and he came out of the car like a grape from its skin. He was six inches shorter than me, forty pounds lighter. I could whip him easily if necessary, and I was glad, because I felt like whipping someone. His name was Colly Alder, and I knew him. He was a fair private detective, not so good as a lot and a little better than a few.

“Hello, Colly,” I said. “We haven’t met for a while.”

“Cut it out, Percy.” He pawed at the hand that twisted the tie that cut his wind. “God-damn it, you’re choking me.”

“Certainly I’m choking you,” I said, “and after I get through choking you, I’m going to slap your chops and stand you on your head and kick you over your car. I’m going to do this, Colly, simply because I’m big enough and feel like it. I was worked over myself today by a couple of experts, and it hurt my face and my feelings, to say nothing of my professional prestige, and ever since it happened I’ve been looking for someone to work over in return, and you seem to be it. I admit that this isn’t fair. I think it’s psychological or something. I have a friend who is sharp about such things, and I’ll ask her later.”

His eyes were popping a little, as much from what I said, I think, as from his assaulted trachea. His voice, working under handicap, was hoarse and sporadic, issuing in short bursts.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Percy? You drunk or crazy or what?”

“I told you what’s the matter. My feelings have been hurt, and I’m looking for someone to stomp. It doesn’t help my feelings any to find myself being tailed by another private detective. There’s something reprehensible about it, Colly. It’s treason, sort of.”

His face was getting darker than I liked, not liking homicide, and so I let him go. He slipped the knot of his tie and loosened his collar and began massaging his throat with his fingers. While doing this, he uttered plaintive little retching sounds that almost made me bleed.

“You think I’m tailing you?” he said finally.

“I know damn well you’re tailing me.”

“Honest to God, I’m not, Percy. I swear I’m not.”

“Sure you do. You swear and swear, and you’re a damn liar. I think I’ll choke you some more, Colly. It’s fun.”

I reached for him, and he skipped backward, plastering himself against the side of the car.

“All right, Percy, all right. So I’m tailing you. It’s legitimate, God damn it. A guy’s got a right to take a case where he finds it.”

“Sure he has, Colly. He can take the case, and he can take the consequences. That’s something I learned a long time ago, and I started learning it all over again today. Who hired you?”

He looked sullen, shaking his head.

“That’s privileged stuff, Percy.”

“The hell it is. Private detectives don’t receive privileged communications.”

“Not legally, maybe, but we got to respect each other’s privilege in the trade. You know that as well as I do, Percy, and you got no right to ask me.”

He had me there, and I had to admit it. It was a privilege I’d exercised myself and would exercise again whenever it was necessary and I could get away with it. It had no legal status, as Colly said, but it was accepted and honored by honorable members of the trade, if by no one else. I was still hurting and still mad and still wanting to slap Colly around, but I decided under the circumstances that I’d better spit in his eye and let him go.

“All right,” I said. “You’ve got a right to a case, and you’ve also got a right to turn one down. I didn’t think you’d do this to me, Colly, and I’m disappointed. I’ll respect your privilege to keep your client’s name to yourself, and it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot, to tell the truth, because I’ve got a good idea who he is, and you can go back to him tomorrow and tell him you loused up the job by getting caught and won’t be any good to him any longer. Even if you decide to keep the job for the fee, you might as well go home and go to bed now, because that’s what I’m going to do, and it would be a shame for you to lose your sleep for nothing. Good-night, Colly. I don’t think, from now on, that I’m going to like you much.”

Tossing the ignition key onto the front seat of the car, I started back across the street. Before I had reached the curb, the starter of the car was grinding, and the tired engine coughed and caught fire with a roar. By the time I had crossed the sidewalk to the entrance of the building, the car and Colly were half way to the corner under a full head. I went inside and back up the long, long stairs and into my room.

It was still dark in there, and this time I found the switch and flipped it. Jim Beam was still sitting on the table, where I’d put it before going down, but Robin Robbins had moved. She had left the window and was sitting in a corner of a sofa. She was wearing what she had been wearing when I had seen her earlier in Silas Lawler’s office, and what this was primarily was a black sheath dress with a slit in the skirt to give leg room for walking. Her high-heeled sandals were black also, and the sandals and the dress and her hair and her eye made quite a lot of black altogether, but on her it all looked good and not in the least mournful, even the eye. The slit skirt of the tight sheath had slipped up an inch or two on her thighs, which is inevitable in a sheath in a sitting position, and this left quite a lot of pretty nylon out in the open.

“I watched from the window,” she said. “You handled him nicely.”

“He was a little guy,” I said. “I had a notion to get real tough.”

“Who was he?”

“One of the brotherhood. A private detective. His name’s Colly Alder.”

“You know him before?”

“Slightly. We’d brushed against each other in some connection.”

“Who put him on your tail?”

“He didn’t want to say.”

“Couldn’t you persuade him? As you said, he was a little guy.”

“I guess I’m just a softy. The sight of blood makes me sick.”

She tilted her head to one side and stared at me with a speculative expression. In accomplishing this, besides tilting her head, she closed her plain eye and stared with the one that had been decorated.

“That’s partly a joke and partly not,” she said. “You’ve got a soft spot, all right. Basically you’re a tender slob. I’ve got a theory that ugly men tend to be tender.”

“That’s interesting. You’re simply loaded with interesting theories about this and that. Do you mind if I take off my coat and stay awhile?”

“Not at all. Make yourself at home.”

I removed the coat and tossed it into a chair that was already occupied by mink. The mink and worn tweed didn’t look very compatible. They looked as if someone were slumming. Leaving them together in a state of precarious tolerance, I went into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. When I returned, Robin had shifted sidewise on the sofa and had drawn her feet up under her neat behind, leaving her nylon knees out. I went over and sat on the sofa beside her.

“You have nice knees,” I said.

“Do you like them?” She bent over from the hips to examine them for a moment. “One of them has a dimple when I’m standing.”

“Only one? That’s tough.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it makes them rather intriguing for one to have a dimple and the other not.”

“You’re probably right. The next time you’re standing, remind me to look and see.”

Her plain eye and her decorated eye moved slowly around the room together. It was a homely room, even a shabby room, but it had in it a few things I liked. And sometimes, when I was reading at night or lying in bed, it seemed like home and a good place to be. Now, with her in it, it had color and light and warmth and a sense of excitement. To me, that is. To her it was palpably nothing much. Her eyes moved slowly from one thing to another and were finally arrested by a picture of some olive trees. I had bought it in a second-hand shop one rainy afternoon when I had felt the need of something pleasant to look at.

“What’s that?” she said.

“It’s a picture of some olive trees.”

“Is that what they are? I like them.”

“So do I. Maybe it’s a sign that we have an affinity or something.”

“It’s possible. I admit that you appeal to me in a peculiar way. Is it supposed to be a good picture?”

“It’s a bad print of a good picture. The original was painted by a Dutchman named Van Gogh. He was nuts. He cut off one of his own ears.”

“He must have been nuts in a nice way to have painted such trees.”

“Sure. In a nice way. The same way I’m ugly.”

“That’s right.” She looked at me briefly with her black eye. “Your room is interesting as a change, but it’s really a dump. Can’t you actually afford any better?”

“I sort of like it,” I said. “What can you expect from a guy who wears ready-made suits?”

“Aren’t you sometimes depressed by living here?”

“I’d be sometimes depressed no matter where I lived. You’re under no obligation to stay, incidentally, if you find it intolerable. As a matter of fact, you were under no obligation to come, and I wonder why you did.”

If she heard me, she gave no sign of it. Her eyes moved away from the cheap Van Gogh print and hung up on Jim Beam.

“Are you saving that for something special?”

“Sure,” I said. “For you.”

“Good. I’ll have some right now, if you don’t mind.”

“There’s no ice.”

“That’s all right. I’ll have it straight.” I got up and went into the bathroom and got a couple of tumblers off the back edge of the lavatory. I rinsed them in hot water and carried them back into the room. Opening Jim Beam, I poured about three ounces into both tumblers and handed one of them to Robin. She took a stout swallow and held her breath for a few seconds afterward and released the breath slowly. I sat down beside her again, almost brushing the nylon knees, and she lifted the tumbler until it was touching her sulky mouth and looked at me levelly over the rim. She was a tough and accomplished little charmer, all right, and I enjoyed playing the casual game we were playing together. But I was also bruised and worried, if not scared, and I thought it was probably getting time for business.

“Look, honey,” I said. “You’re smart, and you’re beautiful, and any man in his right mind would be tickled to death to have you break into his room any old time, and that’s what I am. I’m tickled to death. I’d like to believe that you did it because I’m a guy you just can’t resist. But I’m not, and you didn’t, so there’s no use wasting time on that one. Suppose you tell me the real reason in simple words, and I’ll listen and maybe understand. I might even believe you.”

Her petulant little mouth curved slowly and slyly in a smile that was reflected in her smoky eyes, and she leaned forward deliberately from the hips and put the mouth on mine, and it was soft and inciting and still smiling all the while. I didn’t retreat or advance or attempt to evade. For a few seconds I managed an overt passivity that was a covert lie, but a reasonable limit is placed on passivity by glands and such, and finally I reached for her and held her and felt in my hands the vibration of her body in its thin black sheath. Her mouth opened and stopped smiling. Her breath caught in her throat. She forgot her glass and spilled bourbon on the rug. After a while, with a pleased little mew, she leaned back in her corner and closed her eyes and began again smiling slyly.

“Maybe you underestimate yourself,” she said. “Maybe you’re a guy I just can’t resist.”

“Really? How do I compare with Regis Lawler?”

“Regis was a handsome heel. You’re an ugly touch. In time, I think, I could learn to like you better.”

“I know. It’s worth developing.”

“That’s it.” She opened her eyes and looked at me through the lashes. “I told you that, and you walked out on me. You hurt my feelings.”

“Sorry. I thought you were trifling with me. I’m a lad who doesn’t like being trifled with.”

“Sure. Poor and proud. We’ve been through that.”

“So we have. There’s something else we’ve been through too. Both of us. It happened right after the other time we got together, and it was painful. Do you suppose this little session will have the same result? I wouldn’t want it to become a habit.”

“Don’t worry. Silas was still in the office when I left, and Darcy was tailing you. No one knows where I went. Do you have a cigarette?”

I gave her one and lit it. She inhaled deeply and blew out a long thin plume through pursed lips.

“Did you know that Darcy was tailing you?” she said.

“That’s one of the reasons I came. To tell you that.”

“Thanks. If that’s true, aren’t you running quite a risk being here? It poses a problem.”

“I don’t think so. How could he have followed me if he was following you? Even Darcy can’t be two places at the same time.”

“I didn’t mean when you came. I meant when you leave. If he’s got the place under observation, how the hell do you expect to get away without being seen?”

“Oh, it isn’t likely that he’ll spend the night in the street. Once he’s certain you’re bedded down, he’ll probably go home and pick you up again tomorrow. However, I admit there’s an element of risk, and I’ve been thinking about it. In order to take no chance at all, I’ve decided to stay here until morning. If Darcy’s waiting outside then, he’ll follow you away when you leave, and I can leave later without any risk whatever.”

I drained my tumbler of Jim Beam and walked over for more. My legs felt rubbery, and there was in my head a peculiar lightness. It was not Jim that caused this. Nor bruises nor fatigue nor the cumulative effect of a long and difficult day. It was Robin who caused it. Her casual assumptions and propositions demanded quick and tricky adjustments, and she was, too frequently, too much in effect like a sharp inside belt to the belly.

“You seem to have thought this out very carefully,” I said.

“It didn’t require much thought,” she said. “To be honest, it’s something I want to do anyhow, so it worked out naturally.”

“You took it for granted, I suppose, that I’d be agreeable.”

“Do you object?”

“I’ve got an idea I’d be smart if I did, but I don’t. Maybe we owe it to each other. It’ll give us a good chance to find out if it’s worth developing.”

“That’s true. Anything worth developing will certainly develop now. Would you please pour a little more of that into my glass?”

I gave her more Jim and sat down again beside her. More of the nylon knees were showing than had shown before, and her short black hair had acquired a tousled look that may have been no more than a blur in my eyes. Her own eyes were warm and filled with smoke and an utterly amiable solicitation. I had a strong conviction that business would soon be waiting, and there was still before pleasure a point of business that I wanted to bring up. I took a drink and a deep breath and summoned endurance.

“Did you know that Regis Lawler took seventy-five grand out of the safe in Silas Lawler’s office the night he disappeared?” I asked.

Behind the haze of smoke in her eyes there was for an instant a brief bright flare of genuine surprise.

“Nuts,” she said. “Who told you?”

“Silas himself. Don’t you believe it?”

“No. It’s out of character. Not for Regis, but for Silas. Regis would have been capable, all right — the heel — but Silas would never have let him get away with it. He’d have hunted him down if it had meant never doing another thing for the rest of his life. Not just for the money, you understand. The loss of seventy-five grand wouldn’t mean too much to Silas. For the sake of his precious pride, the essential principle that no one on earth makes a sucker of Silas Lawler. Silas hasn’t been trying to find Regis, He hasn’t been trying because Regis is dead, and Silas knows he’s dead. He knows he’s dead because he killed him.”

“That’s your opinion. I remember your telling me. Why would Silas want to improvise a lie like that? What does it gain him?”

She swallowed some Jim and looked at me levelly while she held her breath and released it slowly in the little ritual of drinking straight. Her black head moved from side to side.

“Cut it out,” she said. “You’re ugly, but you’re not dumb. He did it to patch a hole in the fairy tale that Regis and Constance ran away together. It would take money to do something like that, and Regis didn’t have any. He had some kind of crazy scheme to make a bundle in a hurry, but it wasn’t to steal it from Silas, I’m sure of that. And I’m also sure that it never came to anything, whatever it was.”

“What kind of crazy scheme?”

“I don’t know. I said I didn’t. I only know that it was something that would have been very unpleasant to someone.”

“What makes you think so?”

“He was at my place one night. He was cocky drunk and talking a lot. He was different from Silas that way. Silas keeps a tight lip, but Regis always talked too much. He had a newspaper clipping folded into his wallet. He showed it to me and said that it was going to be worth a fortune to him, but I thought it was just Scotch talking, and I still think so. He had me in heat, damn him, but I knew he was a phony just the same.”

“What was the clipping about?”

“I didn’t read it all. Just the head. It was about some woman getting killed by a hit-and-run driver out in one of the counties.”

“Blackmail?”

“I got the idea.”

“Nice lovers you have, honey.”

“I told you he was a heel. Can a girl turn off her glands? Besides, as you see, I’m trying to do better.”

Standing abruptly, she walked over and set her glass on the table beside Jim Beam. Business, I felt, was finished for the night.

“Where do you sleep?” she said. “On a sofa? On the floor? Or do you stand yourself in a corner?”

“The bed’s in the wall,” I said. “It unfolds.”

“I had one of those once. It wasn’t very comfortable.”

“Neither is this one. The springs sag, and you roll toward the center from either side.”

“Really? It sounds interesting. Is that the bathroom there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll use it for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Use it for as many minutes as you wish. There’s a clean toothbrush in the cabinet above the lavatory.”

She went into the bathroom, and I had another short drink and heard water running. Pretty soon she came back carrying the black sheath and a couple of black trifles, and after that a lot of things happened in some kind of order, and somewhere in the order of things that happened, the bed got unfolded from the wall.