Man Sinister

Chapter III

A few moments after I closed my own door behind me I heard Papa Joe’s door slam, heard his footsteps resound in the hall. Then the slam of another door. Papa Joe had joined his son and daughter-in-law.

McGinty, I thought, whatever it is pushing you, you’d better have your game well-planned. You’re dealing with a high-strung man. Like TNT Harold might go off in your face if you shake him a little the wrong way.

The pint of Old Seaman was still on my bureau. I picked it up. The amber fluid brought back a quick memory. A party. Year 1945. Just the two of us having a party because war had ceased to be my mistress and I was home with my wife.

It was almost a solemn party. She had been unutterably dear and desirable sitting across the-table from me. The long agony of waiting was mirrored in her eyes, eyes that were dark pools of feeling that night. As we danced, her arm across my back clutched me. We didn’t talk as we danced. I think we were both afraid because of the dammed up feelings inside of us. Not afraid of the feelings themselves, understand, only afraid that an untoward gesture might spoil the mood.

We went back to our table and drank highballs. She looked at her drink and said, “You’ll never be sorry, Steve?”

“I? I could never be! I should be asking you that question myself.”

“Sorry that I’m not a Quavely any longer?” Her laugh was shaky, causing me to look at her quickly.

She must have had a pretty rugged time of it at home. They’d had months and months to take her away from me. They had failed. But I suspected how hard they must have tried. I had met her mother and sister on one furlough, not long before that last furlough before I shipped out. They’d known they were losing her. Lucy, the sister, in particular was infused with the importance of family prestige. One thing could be said for Lucy. She hadn’t kept her cards up her sleeve. She had drawn the line; she had spoken her on guard; then she had done battle.

But all of them had failed. I never could blame them too much. I had lost Bryanne finally through failure of my own.

I set the Old Seaman back on the bureau. If Lucy were on my team, if she were here now, what would she say? Something like, “Ever since Papa Joe’s flare-up late this afternoon you’ve been thinking, haven’t you? He bashed your eyes open, didn’t he? Just as soon as you can do so without any unpleasantness, making a scene, you’re leaving here. Then why not keep right on fighting? You won once. Then at the first failure you felt that Bryanna was lost to you forever. Forever is a long time, my friend. In this life you’re not privileged to back up and start over, to erase past mistakes, but you’re never denied a new beginning from the moment you decide to begin again.”

I knew then that I’d been toying with the idea for weeks. I hadn’t liked the taste of defeat from the beginning. Stuff like the Old Seaman hadn’t been able to wash it out-of my mouth.

I walked over to the window. I forgot Harold’s troubles, Papa Joe’s raw bitterness because he was forced to grub for a living in the construction business of grandeur — this in a land where his forbears had ruled.

I felt exhilarated. There would have to be a job, of course, a good one. A little egg in the bank. But it could be done.

From the window, I looked down on the front lawn. My thoughts broke off as I saw the shadowy figure of a man go down the walk, turn north on the sidewalk. He was about the size and build of Harold.

A knock sounded on my door. Still watching the quickly moving man, outside, I said, “Come in.”

The door opened, and I turned to find Vera moving across the room toward me. Her eyes were agitated. “I thought Harold might be in here.”

“No, I haven’t seen him since he came up after talking to McGinty.”

She sat weakly on the edge of the bed. “I’m scared,” she said frankly. “Harold said he wanted a big slug of straight whisky to settle his nerves. He said there was a bottle in the buffet. I went to the dining room and got the bottle and glasses. When I came back up just now he was gone.”

I turned back to the window. It was dark out there now, as dark as if a thunder squall were in the making. Then in the glow of the street light at the intersection of Hickory street and Northland avenue, I saw my man. He was turning west on Hickory.

“I’ll look around outside,” I said. “Likely he decided a short walk would relax him more than a drink.”

She looked up at me. “I hope you’re right,” she said in a low voice. “But Harold is armed.”

Papa Joe and I entered the hall at the same moment.

“What’s up?” he demanded. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t have time to answer his questions. I took the stairs down two at a time.

By the time I reached the intersection of Hickory and Northland, Harold had vanished. I stood in indecision. He hadn’t been heading uptown toward the business district. His turn west on Hickory, the last move I had seen him make, removed the possibility of that. Northland ran straight into the business section. He wasn’t going far, either, or he would have taken his car.

I started west on Hickory, walking rapidly under the dark canopy of the maples that lined the sidewalk. The terrain changed in a few blocks. Houses became fewer, weed-grown fields more prominent. And a few more blocks further on the street would begin twisting downhill toward a settlement of large old houses that had been converted into tenement dwellings for Negroes.

I could surmise only one destination for Harold. About midway between Northland and the Negro district stood an empty cottage on Hickory that Papa Joe owned. If I did not find Harold there, I had lost him completely.

The bungalow stood forbidding and dismal, its windows like black mirrors. I passed the weathered, lopsided “For Sale” sign at the corner of the yard. The unkempt grass chopped at my ankles.

Just as I was deciding that my hunch had been wrong, I saw a flash of light in the bungalow. I moved to the window that had reflected it.

Harold and McGinty were inside the bungalow, McGinty crouched in the beam of the flashlight in Harold’s hand. McGinty’s eyes were distended, his face mottled with fear. He was holding one hand out before him, saying hoarsely, “No!”

Then Harold began shooting. McGinty whirled, knowing in that final instant that death was coming. He plunged through a doorway behind him, into the yawning black emptiness of the room beyond. Harold fired five times, as rapidly as he could pull the trigger. At the distance, I knew it was impossible to miss. I knew the slugs were hammering squarely in the Irishman’s broad back between the shoulder-blades.

The impetus of his motion kept McGinty moving for a second or two. He crashed into something — a door or piece of discarded furniture — in the dark room beyond. And then stillness. Just as suddenly as the whole thing had started, it was over.

Still holding the light and gun, Harold raised his hands to his face. His features were contorted, white, ghastly. He pressed the backs of his hands against the sides of his face.

“McGinty?” he queried. And when no sound came from the adjoining room, a sob broke in his throat. He let the flashlight fall from his nerveless fingers, and bolted.

He chose the back way out of the cottage, a short-cut across weed-grown fields back to the house on Northland. He plunged into the brush and by the time I reached the edge of the yard he had crashed his way out of sight.

I returned to the cottage. A moment’s pause there. Then I went back out on Hickory street.

The nearest house was about a block’s distance away. It was dark, and remained so. Then I saw a lone man hurrying down the street. The shots, then, had been heard. For a moment I had entertained the hope that they had gone unnoticed. The gun was small; the shots had been muffled by the empty cottage.

I faded into the shadows of a tree; heard the quick snapping of the approaching man’s heels against the sidewalk. He paused at the edge of the walk leading to the cottage porch. The man was Papa Joe.

The scuff of my foot startled him, swung him about, swinging up his cane for a quick blow. He lowered the cane slowly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked shortly. “When you ran out of the house, I followed you. Was that shooting I heard?”

“I’m afraid it was.”

“Inside the cottage?”

“Yes.”

“Who was in there?”

“Harold and a man called McGinty. They were apparently keeping an appointment made earlier this evening.”

Papa Joe’s mouth was a tight, thin line, yet his voice quaked, “He — shot Harold?”

“No, it was the other way around.”

Some of the sudden, tortured agony was dissipated from Papa Joe’s bleak features. “He hurt McGinty badly?”

I hesitated. Yet to evade the question and have him learn the truth later would be more cruel than giving it to him now.

I said, “He shot McGinty until the gun was empty. He was hysterical. I don’t think he knew fully what he was doing. But it’s certain he killed a man in there.”

Papa Joe’s whole body shook as if with a chill. But his voice came flat, controlled. “What are you going to do now?”

“Get back to the house as fast as I can, knock my stomach in place with a stiff slug of Old Seaman, then call the police.” Instantly I wondered if I’d sounded flippant. I hadn’t wanted to.

“No,” Papa Joe said, “you’re not calling the police.” The shaking was gone now. As he faced me he was like a tight steel spring.

“What else can we do?” I demanded. “We can’t conceal the fact that the man followed Harold here to Asheville. If we try to hide this, it’s going to make matters worse. Let’s shoot it clean. That’s Harold’s only chance.”

“Steve, Harold is my own son, my only son. Do you think I’ll allow him to be sacrificed to a whim of yours?”

I experienced an upsurge of impatience. It was not a moment to be governed by whims, even his.

I took a step toward the cottage. Papa Joe’s cane moved with the speed of a’ striking snake. I managed to get my face out of the way, but the cane crashed on my shoulders. Before he could strike again, I tore it out of his grasp.

He stiffened, breathing thickly through his nostrils, the glitter in his eyes a challenge.

“Because of the years Harold and I spent together as children,” I said, “I’ll do what I can to help him. Otherwise, the feelings you and I have for each other are such that we can’t stay under the same roof much longer. Now go back to the house. I think Harold went there. Try to get him calmed down. He’s going to need a sound, steady grip on himself. I’ll see if there’s anything at all that can be done for McGinty, then we’ll call the police.”

I handed the cane back to him. He strode stiffly away.

The back door of the cottage was still standing open, as Harold had left it in his headlong flight. I groped my way into a dark hall.

I could feel damp sweat on the palms of my hands. If McGinty was alive I didn’t want him thinking I was Harold, and start shooting.

I said, “McGinty, this is not Cranford. I’m Steve Martin. I’ve come to help you.”

There was no answer. The silence became stifling. A wan glow of light was just ahead — the flashlight that Harold had dropped.

I entered the room where the shooting had taken place. The smell of gunpowder was still strong. I picked up the flashlight and moved to the room where McGinty had crashed down.

The room was empty! McGinty had gone down in this room. I had heard him fall. But he was not there now!