Slam the Big Door

Ten

The phone started ringing early on Monday morning. The concerned, the curious. There had been a paragraph in the Ravenna paper, so brief and noncommittal that it merely whetted curiosity.

“Mrs. Debbie Ann Hunter of Riley Key, daughter of Mrs. Troy Jamison, was rushed to Ravenna Hospital yesterday afternoon after a serious fall. Her condition is said to be fair.”

After taking three calls herself, Mary instructed Durelda to take any others that might come in and tell them Mrs. Jamison was at the hospital.

One call was for Mike. He took it on the wall phone near the kitchen door, and recognized the whispery croaky voice at once as Shirley said, “Mike, that’s a private line, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“So is this one. Mike, the whole Key is buzzing. People are saying Troy put the slug on her. Is she hurt badly?”

He gave a capsule report of the injuries.

She gasped and then said, “Mike, I heard another rumor too. They’re saying Mary got out because Troy was... fooling around with Debbie Ann.”

“Nice clean outlook these people got.”

“I guess you can’t blame them too much. But I thought it would get back to you, and I wouldn’t want you to think I...”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“Thank you, Mike. I felt creepy all day yesterday. Spooky, sort of.”

“Yesterday was one of my large-size days.”

“If there’s anything I can do...”

“I’ll let you know, kid. Thanks for calling. We’re going in right now.”

It was a little after nine when they arrived at the hospital. Her private room was on the third floor. Sam had already seen her and had left word for Mary that she seemed to be in pretty good shape and he was setting up the operation for the following morning.

“Can Mr. Rodenska see her too?” Mary asked the floor nurse.

“As far as I know,” the nurse said.

“Go see her alone,” Mike said. “She’d like that better.”

“I want you with me. Please.”

“Okay.”

The door was ajar. Mary tapped. The special nurse let them in, introduced herself, said the patient was feeling a little better, and left, after asking them to stay not more than ten minutes.

Debbie Ann’s bed was cranked up a few inches. The left side of her face was shocking. The split skin had been stitched and dressed. But what had been a concavity was now a high mound of dark red discoloration. The eye was pinched shut. The swelling distorted the nose and puffed the left corner of the mouth. Her jaw was taped in place. Her finger was splinted. She wore a clumsy-looking neck brace. One gray-blue eye stared at them, wearily, bitterly.

“Oh, my poor baby!” Mary said. “My poor darling.” She pushed a chair close to the bed, sat and took Debbie Ann’s left hand in both of hers. “Do you feel just horrible?”

“I feel awful, Mommy.” The high-pitched voice was very frail. “I hurt in a hundred places.”

Mike stood behind Mary’s chair. That single eye was not dulled. It was aware, and wary. Mike suddenly realized the girl had no way of knowing how much he had told Mary, and had good cause for alarm.

“It was a horrid, brutal, unspeakable thing for him to do. I think he was striking at me through you, darling.”

“Have you seen him, Mommy?”

“No, I haven’t, dear. And when I do I’m going to tell him just what I think about — all this.”

“I stopped because I wanted to talk to him and... all of a sudden he had a... terrible expression on his face... and there was a big kind of white flash, and... I woke up here. I thought... he’d shot me in the face... but the nurse said...” She slowly closed her eye.

“Darling! Are you all right?”

The eye opened just as slowly. “I’m all right.”

“Why did he hit you? Have you any idea?”

The single eye glanced quickly up at Mike, then looked away. He knew the question in her mind had been answered. He felt his muscles tensing.

“I... don’t want to tell you, Mommy. I’m ashamed.”

“Ashamed of what? You must tell me.”

The girl’s voice was halting, remote — her diction impeded by the taped jaw. She had to speak through clenched teeth. “Shirley and I went to the Hutchasons’ party Saturday night. Then we went back to the house. We had some drinks. Mike and Troy were there, drinking. We sort of — went right on drinking. Troy was making my drinks. I guess they were strong ones. I lost track. Then we were... walking on the beach... Troy and me. And he said... let’s go look at the Skimmer in the moonlight. We went below... to see if there was any liquor aboard. When... he grabbed me I thought it... was like a joke. And then... I knew it wasn’t. I guess I screamed. But Shirley and Mike were playing records. I... could hear the music. “Begin the Beguine.” He... tore my clothes. They’re in... the back of my closet... on the floor. Before he... finally let me go he made me promise I wouldn’t tell. He said he’d kill me. By then Mike and Shirley were gone. Yesterday... I went for a long ride to think things over... and I decided I... would tell. But first I wanted to find out... if he was sorry or anything. I saw him and he wouldn’t talk. So I got out of the car, right in front of him. I said... we should both tell you what happened, Mommy. And he... hit me. That’s why he hit me. I think he... thought he killed me.” She gave a long gasping sigh through clenched teeth and then made what must have seemed to Mary like a pathetic little attempt at a joke. “If that’s what rape is like... it’s pretty hard to do like they tell you to do — relax and enjoy it.”

Mary stood up so suddenly the chair banged back against Mike’s knees. She turned blindly, her face like dirty chalk, and plunged toward the doorway. Mike looked at the wide gray-blue eye. In its expression he read smugness, mockery, satisfaction.

“Bitch!” he said softly, and hurried after Mary.

He caught up with her at the hallway desk near the elevators. She had picked up a phone. The floor nurse was objecting. Mary was ignoring her, and requesting an outside line. When she got it, she dialed zero, waited a moment and then said, “Connect me with the police, please.”

Mike leaned past her and pushed the cradle down, breaking the connection. She looked at him in complete fury.

“Stop interfering!”

“I want to talk to you first.”

“Get away from me!” She pushed at him and dialed zero again.

Mike took a deep breath. As he firmly, forcibly, took the phone out of her hand, he smacked her solidly on the cheek with his left hand, harder than he had intended. It staggered her slightly. The rigidity of outrage left her — her eyes reflecting the sudden comprehension of a person coming out of shock.

“Why did you—”

He hung up the phone and grasped her upper arm firmly enough to cause a little movement of pain across her lips. He pulled her close to him and said, “Do I have any damn reason in the world to lie to you?” He made his face and voice angry.

“No, but—”

“I want to talk to you before you go off like a rocket.”

“But he should be—”

“Make your call fifteen minutes from now if you still want to. Where can we talk privately, Nurse?”

“The treatment room is empty. The second doorway on the right.”

He walked Mary down the corridor, pushed her in ahead of him, closed the door behind them.

When she turned to face him he could see that she was beginning to be furious again. “I know you’re a good friend of Troy’s, Mike, but you can’t cover up something like—”

“Shut up! You’re here to listen, not argue. I’m not protecting Troy. The hell with Troy. I’m keeping you from making a damn fool of yourself — from setting up a public scandal. The girl isn’t worth it, Mary. She’s lying. And she’ll keep right on lying to you in that silly little voice, and if it ever came to the point of a trial, any punk little attorney Troy wanted to hire would tear her testimony to small dirty pieces.”

“But—”

“I know what actually happened. Shirley McGuire knows, and Troy knows and Debbie Ann knows. And you haven’t the faintest idea what happened or what she’s like. I was gutless last night. I should have told you what happened the night before. She didn’t pull this act until she made damn sure I hadn’t told you.”

“How can you sound so hateful about that poor baby—”

“Listen, will you? And keep remembering I’m not grinding an ax for anybody. I’m the innocent bystander people keep shooting at.”

So he told her. He knew he couldn’t do it delicately, because then she would refuse to believe. It had to be shock treatment. Harsh words. Factual. He put it all in. Her bath-towel routine. Her anecdote about Rob Raines. Her public reputation. Her deviousness. He had always been able to remember dialogue, the special way people fit words together, so that in repetition it has the distinctive flavor of truth. So, after he had told her graphically of his two visits to the Skimmer III, he repeated his conversation with Shirley, with Debbie Ann at breakfast, and finally with Troy.

Defiance had gone out of her. She sat in a hospital chair and stared with lowered head at the green tile floor.

“Check it out,” he told her. “They talk about a wife or a husband being the last to know. Hell, it’s the parent who is the last to know. I’ve seen them in court. They’re terribly confused. They’re caught up in something they don’t understand. So they say to the judge, but Tommy was always a good boy. Or, Janie was always so sweet and polite to everybody. Debbie Ann doesn’t give a damn if she maneuvers you into starting a grubby mess, demanding your own husband be picked up for rape. All she could think about was getting even with Troy for bashing her. She’s not your sweet little baby, Mary. I’m sorry. She’s a woman, married and divorced, idle, sexy and, I’m afraid, a little vicious. The adoration you’ve been giving her isn’t healthy, for either of you.”

He stopped talking. She was motionless except for fingers that plucked at the seam of her skirt.

“Are you all right?”

She raised her head to look up at him. Her face looked dulled, puffy. The lines that bracketed her mouth looked deeper.

“Aren’t they going to leave me anything? Anything at all?”

She was so much longer with the girl than he thought she would be that he had begun to feel uneasy. It had gotten so hot in the station wagon that he had walked over to the shade of a big fern palm at the corner of the lot.

When he saw her coming, it was a sight that lifted his heart. She took long strides, her head held high, the sun striking the glossiness of her dark hair and the strong planes of her brown face. She moved with a physical articulation which was, at a distance, a youthfulness which dropped her from forty-two to twenty-five. But there was no sense of letdown when she came closer. When, in a woman, full maturity is combined with character and with pride, it creates a special beauty unattainable by the very young. Her strong chin was high, and there was a look around her mouth of a person who has tasted something slightly spoiled.

It’s pride, he thought. That damn rare wonderful thing. A proud man will keep getting up. Break both his legs and he’ll still give it a try. A proud woman won’t whine. She won’t give you the stifled sob and sheepdog routine. She’ll square her pretty shoulders and stick those knockers out like a bureau drawer and suck in her tummy, and put a little swing in her hips, and spit right square in your eye.

He fell into step beside her. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “I ran into Sam in the elevator. The orthopedic surgeon will operate tomorrow. He’s had a look at the X-rays and he thinks he can reconstitute that cheekbone so her face won’t be lopsided. The concussion was minor. Results of the lab tests are good.”

They got into the car and headed south toward the Key. He sensed she’d report on Debbie Ann when she was damn well ready. And she wasn’t damn well ready until two-thirty that afternoon. He was floating a hundred feet from shore when he saw her standing on the beach in skirt and blouse, shading her eyes. He thrashed in, trying valiantly to look less like a stern-wheeler in reverse, and came up the beach toward her, trying to hold his stomach firmly against his backbone.

“I’ve made all the damn fool phone calls, Mike. I’m going back to the hospital now.”

“I can get ready fast.”

“No. I’ll go in alone.” She smiled in a crooked way. “And finish the job.”

“Finish it?” he asked, and thumped water out of his ear with the heel of his hand.

“I still had little tiny doubts, Mike. I had to be sure. So I used one of — her weapons. The lie. I let her think I’d reported Troy to the police. She was delighted. I sat and led her on. I made her embroider her nasty story. She contradicted herself. I looked concerned until my face felt stiff. Then I fell on her. I told her I hadn’t called, wouldn’t call. I called her a liar. I told her if she wasn’t hurt, I’d thrash her. She got defiant. She said she would tell the police. I told her to go ahead. She could go ahead and I would see that Troy had a trial, and I would make certain that you and I and Shirley and Troy testified against her. I told her that Troy would then have a basis for civil action against her and he could very well take away most of that money she’s so fond of. Then I got very motherly when she started to cry. My heart went out to her — almost. I told her to stop trying to get even with Troy in any way. I told her she had been very bad — that she had done a monstrous thing — and she should concentrate on getting well. I kissed her on the forehead and left. I found the special and told her Debbie Ann might be quite upset for a while. I was so firm with her, Mike. So cool with my baby. And so close to breaking down in front of her. But I couldn’t let that happen. I know I shocked her terribly. She stared at me with that one pathetic eye as if she’d never seen me before.”

“Maybe she never has.”

“If she’s well enough when I go in, she’s going to get some woman talk. Woman-to-woman, not mother-to-daughter.”

“You’re quite a gal, Mary.”

“No, Mike. As long as there are motions I have to go through, I’ll go through them just as thoroughly as I can. I don’t like any part of it. It’s rough to take the veils off your eyes and really look at your own child, and see something that shames you. Can I wish a nasty job on you?”

“Sure.”

“See if you can find Troy. Tell him I’m starting divorce action immediately. Tell him about Debbie Ann and what I would have done if you hadn’t had the good sense to stop me. It might scare him a little. Tell him that Durelda is packing the rest of his things and if he’ll give me an address, I’ll have them trucked to a storage warehouse and send him the receipt. Tell him not to come back here on any pretext whatsoever. And tell him I want his stock in Horseshoe Pass Estates signed over to me immed—”

“I forgot to tell you. He said he was going to do that today. At the lawyer’s office.”

“You can use Debbie Ann’s car.” She looked at her watch. “I’m running behind schedule. I’ll see you back here?”

He watched her walk briskly up the path and across the road, light skirt swinging, red shoes in female cadence.

Efficiency, he said to himself. Pack the stuff. Hire a truck. Get the stock. Pow. The alternative — lie in a darkened room using up a whole box of Kleenex, blaming it all on Everybody Else.

Shelder’s Cottages were locked in the hot doze of siesta. Sun turned the crushed, bleached shell to a blinding white. Mike stood, squinting, in front of the porch door to number Five, trying to peer into the interior of the cottage. The Mercury was gone. He had not seen the Mercury in front of Red’s B-29 Bar. The inner door was open.

“Troy?” he called. “Jerranna?” He banged on the screen door. He had the feeling that someone in one of the cottages across the way was staring at him. He could feel the icy weight of their intentness on the sweaty nape of his neck. He turned and looked behind him. A slat of a Venetian blind fell back into place.

He shrugged and opened the screen door and walked into the cottage. It was almost as hot inside as it was out in the full glare of sunshine. The couch in the small living room had not been made up. Gray sheets were bunched at the foot, a burned hole as big as a saucer visible. The litter was inclusive — cellophane wrap and empty bottles and empty cans and butts stomped into the green grass rug and a random shoe and a black bra and seashell ashtrays, overflowing; and frayed comic books and movie magazines and girlie magazines; and damp towels; and, taped to the wall, over a lamp with a tilting broken shade, a Playgirl of the Month, in full color, her face emptied by a solicitous grimace, her rump glossy, her breasts improbable — pink junket from a jokester’s mold. She looked across the room at him with her color-press eyes, frozen there forever in that meaningless and cynical and never-to-be-fulfilled promise to infinite pimply-faced legions.

The still, heated air was an intricately symphonic construction of aromas. The major themes were the moldy damp, with a basic old-laundry motif, with a repetitive glissando of perspiration, and the final theme of old-smoke — spilled-beer. Through and above and between this almost Wagnerian ponderousness could be detected the sharp little discords of perfume, marijuana, orange peel, burned food, female, urine and tropic sex.

He had stood in rooms like this one in many places. You looked at where they’d chalked the outline of the body on the floor. You watched them dusting for prints. You marveled at how high the blood had spattered on the wall. You listened to the coarse humor of officials with heavy faces and dead eyes, and if they threw a joke right at you, you laughed it up, because if you could keep on being one of the boys you’d get first crack at the next tawdry little room where animal violence had been done.

But, he reflected, if violence were done here, you wouldn’t write a news story that gave the reader the reek of the place, the look of dreadful indifference. LUST MURDER IN RESORT BEACH LOVE NEST.

He moved to the bedroom door. He hoped he was wrong. But he wasn’t. The room was a suitable companion to the living room. It was empty. Troy’s suitcase stood in a corner. The shirt he had worn yesterday was across the foot of the bed.

This is what he wants, Mike thought. This is the way he wants it. This can make him content, because it’s the proper punishment for all his crimes. He is unworthy in his own eyes, and this is his bed of nails. This is his satisfying torment, his ceremony of purification. Once upon a time I knew a man who killed his wife. He loved her. He killed her unintentionally. He was proud of her. He wanted her as slim as the day he met her. So he hounded her, out of love. So she dieted intelligently and it did not do a bit of good because in maturity she had a natural heaviness, so she dieted unintelligently and that worked and she got down to the hundred and ten pounds he had been harping about, and she looked terrible, but he couldn’t see that. And then she could not reverse the process, and she weighed ninety-five when the doctors got a chance to work one of those miracles of medical science on her, but she was beyond the point of being able to use a miracle, and died weighing not much over seventy pounds, and they gave the man hell for permitting his wife to diet herself to death out of vanity. And it took him sixteen months to kill himself. He was a big man. It took him that long to eat himself to death. They had to use a special coffin. And dig a bigger hole than usual.

So is this so entirely different? You can nasty yourself to death. It’s part of the same wish. The death wish is the daughter of guilt. Let every man belly up to the bar and order his own poison.

There were some papers on top of the bureau. He moved over, silently, looked without touching. There was a carbon of a legal document. It was dated today. Notarized today. It transferred seven hundred shares of the Horseshoe Pass Estates Corporation from Dexter Troy Jamison to Mary Kail Dow Jamison, written so as to imply that the certificates, properly endorsed, would accompany the original. There was a stub of red pencil in the bureau-top tray. He turned the letter over and quickly wrote, “Troy — Mary will start proceedings at once. You need expect no police trouble over Debbie Ann. She will require surgery but is in no danger. A warehouse receipt for the rest of your things will be sent to this address. Mary requests you make no attempt to contact her. Mike.”

He hesitated, the pencil poised. Stick on a jolly postscript to my old buddy-buddy? Some little gesture of warmth? No, he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want the obligation.

He started to walk out of the place, after putting the note in the middle of the sagging double bed, weighting it down with a half pretzel, and was vastly startled to be confronted by an enormous old woman who stood on runover shoes just inside the screen door, blocking the way and dwarfing the porch.

“What you doin’ here?”

“Leaving a note for a friend.”

“I own this here place. They’s payin’ for two and sleepin’ three. I got toll about somebody movin’ in with a suitcase yestiddy, so they owes more, startin’ then. You see ’em, you tell ’em.”

“I won’t see them.”

“Don’t keer about a thang but gettin’ full money.”

“I have a feeling they won’t be with you long.”

“That’ll be a good thang, mister, on account I got me too many complaints on them people.” She turned like the USS America, grasped the door frame, lowered her weight down the two steps with much grunting, and headed for her cottage.

He followed her slowly, went out to where he had parked the Porsche. The shabby gaudy shacks stood disconsolate in the late afternoon sun. The Wiltin’ Hilton, he thought. Bad housekeeping. Nobody has dusted the cabbage-palm fronds. Somebody left some fish in the sun. Come to this retirement paradise, all you senior citizens. (This seems more palatable than “oldsters.”) You’ve got your savings and you’ve got that Social Security, so take your choice. Be a guest of Ma Shelder and live right on the water. Or should you prefer to own your own home, the possibilities are infinite. Take Gracious Heights, for example. There you can buy the version of the Retire-a-Days which best suits you. These exquisite cinder-block homes range from $7,777.95 up to $13,333.50, including closing costs, complete with jalousied Florida room, modern kitchen, carport, septic tank and homestead exemption. Gracious Heights is only fifteen minutes from a new modern shopping center. (Clocked by Fangio in a D Jag with a running start.) You will live in the real Florida. (Entirely authentic, eighteen miles back into the scrublands, flat as a two-dollar tire.) Become an expert on the flora and fauna. (Chinch bugs, red bugs, cockroaches, fire ants, coral snakes, nutria, palm rats, buzzards, strangler figs, palmetto, saw grass, scorpions.) Retire the exciting way. (Gracious Heights is under an average six inches of water twice a day during the rainy season.) Or, if you prefer to build, spacious quarter-acre lots available, ten dollars down, ten dollars a month. (A quarter acre is roughly one hundred feet by one hundred feet.) Four more natural lakes ready soon.

Rodenska inserted himself into the Porsche, fumbled it into reverse, backed out and got away from there.

That was Monday. On Tuesday Hanstohm operated on Debbie Ann in the late morning. Sam Scherman observed the operation. He was pleased and optimistic about the eventual results. As Debbie Ann came out of the anesthetic in the recovery room, a nurse waited with wire clippers so as to be able to free her jaw quickly should Debbie Ann become nauseated and thus in danger of strangling. She was moved back to her private room in the late afternoon. Mary saw her and reported to Mike that she seemed very listless and groggy but otherwise all right.

They had dinner alone that night at the Key Club. Mary skillfully parried the questions of the overly curious who stopped at their table. She said there would be talk about the two of them being together — stupid, inventive talk, but she did not give one damn. They drank to that and drove home through a gusty night in the Porsche, with the top down, the radio tuned too loud to a Havana station.

On Wednesday morning Mike drove Mary to the hospital and waited there for her, and then they drove into town and conferred with the lawyer, vague elderly Morton Stalp, whom Mike had met during the course of his investigation. Stalp kept the books of the corporation. He explained all that had to be done to change the setup so deeds could be properly signed, and promised to start taking the first steps immediately. From there they went to the sales office on the property and talked to Marvin Hessler.

Hessler was depressed. But he cheered up remarkably when he found that Troy was out, and that things might well improve. They talked a long time. Hessler’s ideas seemed valid to Mike. He knew he would have to check them out with expert, disinterested parties before going ahead.

As they were about to leave, Marvin said, “Say, yesterday that old Purdy Elmarr was here, poking all over the place. He didn’t want any help at all. Said he was just looking. That’s what they all seem to say. But he sure looked a long time.”

“Thanks, Marvin,” Mike said.

After they were in the car, Mary said, “Trouble?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that old man snowed me good. I had the feeling he quit too easy. He’s — hard to figure. He’s playing poker every minute. Now I got the feeling I showed him my hole card and while I was doing it, he was palming an ace.”

“If he’s going to squeeze us, Mike, I won’t let you come in with me. I won’t permit that.”

“He’s got you scared?”

“I’m not scared of Purdy or anybody else and you know it. But trying to buck him would be like — trying to stop a train by falling in front of it.”

“I’ll have to see him again.”

“We’ll have to see him. Both of us. And tell him Troy is out.”

“I’ll bet eleven dollars he knew all about that by noon last Monday.”

Mary fixed dinner for them Wednesday night. They played cribbage after dinner. She was a resolute competitor, with all the proper desire to win.

The phone rang during the middle of the third game. “Don’t stack the cards,” she said as she got up.

“Yes?” he heard her say. “Yes, this is she. What? What is that? Oh! Oh, my God!”

He had gotten up quickly at the sound of her voice. He went to her. Her face was so bloodless her deep tan had turned a dirty yellow. She swayed. He pushed her into a chair. “Debbie Ann?” he asked her.

“No. Troy,” she said.

He picked up the dangling receiver.