Nemesis

Chapter II

He woke up by degrees. For a long interval he hung in a limbo that wasn’t sleeping or waking. Just a hazy in-between state.

Then his mind started to work. He had no physical sensation at all. All he had was disconnected thoughts that came out of white space.

He remembered things in strange sequence. There was Fran and a blonde. Drinks that made him sick and a wonderful dinner. A wise looking cab driver and a little brunette dice girl that liked his looks.

His first physical sensation was of lying down. On his left side with a pillow under his head. That meant he was in bed.

He tried to open his eyes and he couldn’t. He was becoming aware of pain in his head. A splitting pain that stretched across his forehead.

Finally he managed to get his eyes open but it didn’t help much. The room was almost dark. It smelled of liquor and stale smoke.

There was someone lying beside him. There was enough light for him to identify a head of silvery blonde hair and a finely chiseled profile. His right arm was flung across her chest.

More sensations were coming back. He raised himself on one elbow and the physical effort brought a black siege of nausea. When it passed he looked down at the girl.

She did not look pretty. Her lean features were twisted in a smile. But the smile had no humor in it. It was set and stiff and it wasn’t a smile at all.

Her face looked like cold wax. Her eyes were open, staring blandly at the ceiling.

Larry saw this and it didn’t register. He didn’t know she was dead until he saw the knife. The knife was buried hilt-deep between the cup of her naked breasts. And the fingers of his outflung arm held the handle of the knife in a tight grip.

He lay there and stared at his hand. As if it were something he never had seen before. Something that didn’t belong to him. He saw the blood then, dark and crusted, on his hand, on his shirt sleeve, on the girl’s naked chest.

Something was crawling in his throat. He felt sick and shriveled inside.

He got off the bed and groped for a light-switch. The light showed him a cheap, small bedroom, with a curtained window, a chest of drawers, two chairs and an open door leading to a bathroom.

And the bed. That was all. The girl on the bed was naked, but the sheet was pulled across her hips. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor.

The thing was crawling in his throat again and he stumbled into the bathroom. He was sick for a long time. Then he tried to wash the blood from his hand. It stuck like glue. He got it off, but he couldn’t do anything about his sleeve.

He came back into the bedroom and sat down in one of the chairs. He stared at the dead body of the girl. He didn’t think. There was nothing but white horror in his head.

He was sitting there when the loud knock sounded on the door.

He turned to the door and his breath made a scratching noise in his ears. His heart was pounding as if he’d been running up-hill.

The knock was repeated, and a shrill, feminine voice said, “I got to have this room at ten o’clock. Keep that in mind. You don’t lay around all day in my house.” The knock sounded again. “Do you hear me in there?”

Larry prayed for the woman to go away. He wanted her voice to stop. He wanted the knocking to stop. If she knocked on the door again he knew he’d start screaming.

He said, “I heard you,” and his voice was a whisper. He tried again and it came out louder. She said, “See that you’re out of there by ten, that’s all.”

He heard her feet shuffle away and he got up and put on his suit coat, top coat and hat. He wasn’t thinking yet. But he had the blind instinct of flight.

One flicker of reason made him take out his handkerchief and wipe the hilt of the knife clean, and then he went to the door. He heard nothing on the opposite side and when he twisted the knob and pushed it open he was looking out on a gloomy, empty corridor.

He stepped out, pulled the door behind him and started down the single flight of steps. As he reached the front door of the house he heard someone coming down from the upper floors. He pulled open the door and ran down a flight of stone steps to the street.

He started walking. The street was in a cheap neighborhood. There were ashcans on the sidewalk and the houses were ancient structures, with brown-stone fronts, bay windows and gold lettered street numbers.

At the first intersection he saw a street sign. Nelson Boulevard. That was on the South Side. About four miles south of the Loop. About a mile West.

He kept walking. A clock in a pawn shop said seven-thirty. There weren’t many people on the street. He passed a colored couple, a gray-haired man with a metal lunch box, an old woman who looked like she was coming off a gin hangover.

He kept walking. He had no idea of direction. But there was a hopeless horror building inside him and he knew that soon he would have to think. He was afraid of thinking. As long as he could walk on blindly he felt invisible and anonymous, but he couldn’t go on forever. Sometime his thoughts would catch up with him.

At eight-thirty he turned into a restaurant. It was a cheap Greek eating place and there was no one at the counter. He sat down and ordered coffee from the proprietor, a fat man, with skin like leather and mustache that looked like a dirty scrub brush.

The coffee was in a thick white mug and he couldn’t drink it. He sat and looked at the cup. He tried to light a cigarette but his hands were trembling too much.

He started thinking. He tried not to, but it was no use.

He remembered the blonde girl he’d met, he remembered that she wanted him to go home with her. And he remembered how she looked lying on the bed with a knife stuck into her, and her blood crusted and dark on her white breast.

He thought of Fran. And he made a noise in his throat like an animal.

How long he sat there he had no way of knowing, but when he felt the hand on his shoulder he learned something. He learned about fear.

He looked up and there was a big man, with a hard, gray face, a gray overcoat and a gray hat standing beside him. The hand on his shoulder was big and business-like.

Larry tried to say something, but the words stuck. He couldn’t meet the big man’s level gaze.

“Let’s see your wallet,” the big man said.

Larry heard the words. He knew what they meant, but he didn’t have any muscular coordination. He started fumbling with his tie. The big man said again, “The wallet. And fast. I’m from the Bureau of Detectives.”

He got out the wallet and handed it over. The big man looked at it, thumbed through the papers, then handed it back.

“Get up. We’re taking a trip.”

Larry got up and went outside with the big man. There was a police car parked at the curb. The big man opened the front door, climbed in after Larry. He started the car, put it in gear and drove toward the Loop.

He didn’t talk much.

He said, “What did you do it for?”

“I don’t know.”

“They all say that. Do you think that helps her any?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guys like you should get the book.”

Larry shook his head slowly and then he pressed his hands against his face. He couldn’t think anymore.

The copper said, “We were lucky to get you without any trouble. Usually you guys keep us working for a week.”

He shut up then and concentrated on driving. They were on a through-street now leading into the Loop. When they reached State Street the copper pulled up beside a Subway entrance.

He reached over and opened Larry’s door.

“Now get this,” he said. “Go home and stay there. You got no cause to be worrying your wife like you did. She’s been on our necks all last night. Lucky I got a flash this morning before I started back to work.”

Larry felt his throat crawling again. He was afraid he was going to be sick. “You’re letting me go?” he said.

“Sure. We got nothing to book you on. Your wife called the cops, the fire department, the Missing Persons Bureau, and just about everybody else when you didn’t come home last night. She thought you’d been hit by a truck. We don’t care how many times a guy walks out on his wife, but when she starts squawking to us, that’s just another headache. Now take my advice, when you go on a bat the next time, cover up in advance. Tell her you got to work, or got a business trip to make. Then she don’t worry, and we don’t get no headaches. Get on home now. And you’d better think up a good story to tell her.”

Larry didn’t trust himself to talk. He felt like laughing. But he was close to hysteria. This copper was practically shoving him out of the car. Giving him advice about being a good husband, keeping out of trouble. Saving the police headaches.

In another hour this copper and every other one in the city would be looking for him. And not to give him advice.

He got out of the car and the copper leaned over and looked at his hand.

“Hurt yourself last night, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I fell, I guess,” Larry said.

His heart was pumping again, heavily, painfully. He wanted to turn and run, but something told him nothing would be more fatal. And then he felt a leaden despair. What did it matter?

The copper said, “Want me take you down to the station and have it fixed up?”

Larry shook his head and stepped back into the car. He pulled the door shut and said, “You may as well take me down to the station anyway.”

“What’s the idea?”

“I don’t know how to say it,” Larry said. His voice sounded a million miles away, flat and expressionless. “When I woke up this morning there was a dead girl lying beside me. She had a knife stuck into her. My hand was holding the knife. I guess you’d better take me in.”