The Girl with the Long Green Heart

Fifteen

Maybe I was getting old. When they rang the room in the morning the phone set little devils dancing in my head. I grabbed the phone and said all right, damn it, all right, and put the phone in the cradle and found my way to the john. The demons kept doing the twist inside my skull. I went through the standard wake-up ritual and tossed in a pair of aspirins and a Dexemil. All of this helped me wake up, and this in turn did little more than make me more aware of my headache. Too much Scotch, too little sleep — I was definitely getting too old for the life. The roadhouse in the mountains beckoned.

I put the good white shirt on once again, tied the small knot in the sincere tie, worked my way into the conservative suit. In another couple of hours I could unknot that tie and drop it in a handy wastebasket; in another couple of hours I could wipe the matching sincere look from my face and begin looking like me again. It was about time. The masquerade was beginning to make me ache, the costume was wearing thin on my frame. In another couple of hours—

Outside, the sun was all too bright. I let a couple of cups of coffee pretend to be breakfast and battled the sunlight once again. According to plans, I was supposed to be at the office at ten for the skinning ceremonies. It was time. I stepped to the curb, and a cab glided to me as if by magic. I hopped in and gave the driver the address.

It was funny. In the old days a time like this was always sweetly tense, the precious moment before the kill, the instant frozen in time when the matador stood poised, sword ready, with the great gross bull rushing in to impale himself and die in beauty. On mornings like this my eyes were bright and my head clear, and no quantity of liquor or shortness of sleep could cancel the fresh glory of it all.

It should have been like that now, and it was not. Not at all. Instead the hangover was in full bloom, aided and abetted by little grains of doubt and fear. Something gnawed at me. Something demanded attention. There was the feeling you get when you’ve left a room and you’re dead certain you left a cigarette burning. Or the feeling you’re left with after an alcoholic blackout — memory is gone, and you assume at once that you’ve done something dreadful; there are threads and patches in the back of your mind but not enough to grab onto and pin down, just enough to drive you mad.

“You’re flipping,” I said. “You’re falling apart.”

“What’s that?”

This last from the cabby. I had been talking aloud and not realizing it, a phenomenon which is always less than comforting.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You talking to me?”

“Just talking to myself.”

“You always do that?”

“Just after a bad night.”

“Oh,” he said.

She’d be in Olean now, waiting. How long? A week for me to clear up everything in Toronto and get back to Colorado. A week was ample; our accounts had to be cleared, our front money had to be paid back, Gunderman’s check had to be routed through channels. And it would be a week and more before she could pick up and join me. Call it ten days. In ten days we would be together, in Colorado, with all of his pretty money in our kick.

In ten days I could quit talking to myself.

Doug was already at the office, looking fresh and well-tailored. He looked at me and shuddered.

“That bad?”

“You look like hell,” he said.

“Well, he wanted to celebrate. We did most of the town.”

“I thought you’d bring him with you. No?”

“He wanted to meet me here.”

“At ten?”

“At ten.”

“Fine,” he said. “He should be here any minute. Everything’s set, the papers, everything. That printer does choice work.”

“He’s expensive.”

“Well, you get what you pay for, Johnny.”

“That’s if you’re lucky.”

“Sure.” He walked around behind his desk, sat down, clasped his hands behind his neck, yawned, unclasped his hands and dug a cigarette out of his pack. He lit it and blew smoke at the ceiling. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes past ten.

“Any minute, Johnny.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So smooth. I’m sorry you were stuck with him last night. He had big eyes to celebrate?”

“Bigger eyes than mine.”

“I hope he didn’t drink so much that he forgets to show up. It’s been so damned smooth so far. Like silk. Was he holding it pretty well?”

“Better than I was.”

“You didn’t let anything out?”

I gave him a look.

“Well, forget I asked.”

I took a cigarette, lit it. The gnawing inside wouldn’t go away. I told Doug that Gunderman should be here by now. “He doesn’t get places late,” I said. “He’s always on time. It’s one of his virtues.”

“Maybe he wants to play hard to get.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that? You don’t walk around with your skirt around your waist for a month and then play hard to get when you finally work your way to the bedroom. He should have been here with bells on. He should have been here before I was, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re getting a little jumpy, Johnny.”

He was right. I was getting more than a little jumpy, and I liked it less and less. I do not like it when people act out of character. I do not like it when patterns are broken. And I like it least of all toward the end of the game, when it is either in or out and no mending the fences once they break. Things can be shaky in the early stages. You aren’t committed, nobody is committed, and you can all feel your way, and back and fill to make things right. But there is no backing or filling as you approach the wire. It has to be perfect, clean and sweet, and any deviations from the norm do not sit well with me.

“Sit down, Johnny.” I hadn’t even realized I was pacing. I went on pacing. “Sit down, damn it, you’re making me nervous.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You know what’s the matter with you?”

“What?”

“You’re losing your goddamned nerve. A few years in San Quentin and you get shaky in the clinches. Johnny, you couldn’t ask for a smoother job than this. Will you sit down and relax?”

I looked at my watch. “No,” I said, “I won’t.”

“What are you doing?”

“Calling him,” I said.

I grabbed the phone and rang the Royal York. The desk man was a long time answering. I asked him if Mr. Gunderman was in, not to bother him but to see if his key was there. He took his time and then told me no, the key was not in the box.

“Ring his room,” I said.

Doug told me I was crazy. I waved him off. The clerk plugged me in and let the phone ring. He let it ring a long time. Nobody answered that phone.

“Shall I check his room, sir?”

I looked down at my hand. The fingers were trembling slightly all by themselves. “No, don’t do that,” I said steadily. “He must have left and taken his key with him. It’s perfectly all right.”

The clerk didn’t pursue the subject. I thanked him, and he rang off.

I said, “No answer. He didn’t leave and he doesn’t answer. He always gets places on time and he’s not here yet.”

“Johnny—”

“Come on, will you?”

“Where?”

“His hotel.”

He looked at me as if he was measuring me for a straitjacket. “He’s on his way over here, Johnny,” he said levelly. “Now calm down, will you? He took his key with him, the way you told it to the clerk, and in one minute he’s going to walk through that door, and—”

I took him by the arm and yanked. “You can wait until hell’s six feet deep in snow,” I said. “He’s never coming through that door.”

“Johnny—”

“And we’re going over there. And fast.”

“Johnny.” He drew himself up straight. He was trying not to look at all nervous, and he was almost making it. “This is my set-up,” he said. “I’m not letting you blow it.”

“It’s blown to hell and back,” I told him. “Move.”

Our cab seemed to crawl. The traffic was thick and the driver less than aggressive. We filled the back of the cab with cigarette smoke and the odor of cooling sweat. All the way there I had the very bad feeling that I had somehow dreamed this entire scene before. Sometime in the depth of sleep I had lived through this episode, and in the morning the memory was gone like smoke. Once I had dreamed this, and I should have remembered the dream. It would have made things much simpler.

When the cab stopped I threw a five at the driver and did not wait for change. On the way into the lobby I told Doug to follow me and not say anything or do anything spectacular. “We are not stopping at the desk,” I told him. “We are going straight to his room. I know where it is.”

He didn’t answer. He had lost the sense of the play. He knew only that something was very wrong, and that I was probably out of my mind, and that it was easier to go along with me than to make me listen to reason. I got us to the elevator and rode one floor above his. I got us out of the elevator, and we went down the stairs to the right floor and along the corridor to his room.

Doug said, “I don’t get it.”

“You will.”

“He’s probably at the office right now. Or he’s sleeping; he got bombed last night and he’s sleeping it off.”

“If he’s at the office he can wait for us,” I said. “If he’s bombed, we’ll apologize for interrupting him. We’ll say we were worried about him, that we wanted to check.”

“I still say this is stupid.”

“You don’t know what stupid is,” I said.

I knocked heavily on Gunderman’s door. One thoroughly wishful corner of my mind expected him to lumber to the door and open it. I did not really expect this, and I was not at all surprised when it did not happen. I reached into my hip pocket and got out my wallet. I took out a gas company credit card.

“Johnny—”

“Shut up.”

The corridor was empty. I worked the credit card between the door and the jamb, and Doug nudged me, and I withdrew the card and waited for a man with an attaché case to emerge from a room down the hall and make his way past us to the elevators. When he was gone I wedged the credit card back where it belonged.

Hotel room locks are nothing at all, not in the fleabags, not in the good places either. I popped the bolt back and turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“If he’s in there—”

If he was, he hadn’t bolted the door. You can’t snick back the inside bolt that way. You only get the one that spring-locks the door from the outside.

I pushed the door open. I went inside, and Doug came after me, and I remembered to shut the door after us. We went inside, and there was the bed and the chair and the dresser and some clothes scattered, and there was what I had somehow known we would find. Because I must have dreamed it all one night, dreamed it and forgotten it somewhere in the dark places of the night.

There was Gunderman, sprawled on the floor between the bed and the wall. He was in his pajamas, loud blue cotton pajamas. He had been shot twice at fairly close range. There were two holes in his chest, quite close together, and one of them must have placed itself in his heart because there was not much blood around. Almost all of it was on his pajamas, with just a little soaking into the rug.

Doug was making meaningless sounds beside me. I looked back stupidly to make sure that the door was closed. It was. I looked around the room. The gun was not too far from the body. I went over to all that was left of our pigeon and knelt down beside him. I touched the side of his face. His flesh was cool but not cold, and the bits of blood were drying but not yet dry. Someone with a better background than mine could have said with assurance just how long dead he was. It was out of my line. I never had all that much to do with dead men.

“Oh, Johnny—”

I walked over to where the gun lay. A good manly gun. Guns were not my line either, but I knew the make and model of this one. A .38 Smith and Wesson with a three-inch barrel and a safety on the grip. I knew it well.

“Don’t touch it, Johnny.”

I picked up the gun.

“Brilliant,” he was saying. “Oh, brilliant. Now you’ve got your prints all over the damned thing, Johnny.”

I knew better. They were already there. I’d put them there long ago in another town in another country. Get me one of my cigarettes, John — and that gun in her purse, waiting to be found, waiting to be gripped. She’d never touched it after that. She let me unload it and put it away myself. She never laid a finger on it — until later, alone, with gloves on, once to load it and once this morning to fire it, twice. I looked down at that dead man and envied him.