The Instant Enemy

chapter 28

I GOT TO SANTA TERESA shortly after one o’clock. I had a cold sandwich in a restaurant near the courthouse, and walked from there to Fleischer’s house, slowly. I wasn’t looking forward to another interview with Fleischer’s widow.

The drapes pulled over the front windows gave the house a shut and deserted look. But there was life inside of it. Mrs. Fleischer answered the door.

She was drinking again, or still, had passed through various stages of drunkenness into a kind of false sobriety. She was decently clothed in a black dress. Her hair was brushed and in place. The tremor in her hands wasn’t too obvious.

But she didn’t seem to remember me at all. Her eyes looked right through me, as if there was someone behind me and I was a ghost.

I started over. “You may not remember me. I was working with your husband on the Davy Spanner case.”

“He killed Jack,” she said. “Did you know that? He killed my husband.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She glanced at the neighbor’s house, and leaned toward me, conspiratorially, twitching at my sleeve. “Didn’t you and I have a talk the other night? Come in, I’ll pour you a drink.”

I followed her into the house reluctantly. The lights were on in the living room, as if she preferred to live in permanent evening. The drinks she brought were gin faintly tinctured with tonic. We seemed to be picking up where we had left off.

She drank most of hers down. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said without gladness. “I mean it. Jack only got what was coming to him.”

“How so?”

“You know as well as I do. Come on, drink up your drink.”

She finished hers. I drank a little of the oily mixture in my glass. I like to drink but that particular drink, in Jack Fleischer’s house and his widow’s company, reminded me of taking castor oil.

“You say you were working with Jack,” she said. “Did you help him make the tapes?”

“Tapes?”

“Don’t try to kid me. A policeman called me from L.A. this morning. He had a funny name, a Polish name, Junkowski, something like that. Know him?”

“I know a Sergeant Janowski.”

“That’s the name. He wanted to know if Jack left any tapes around the house. He said they could be important in a homicide. Laurel got it, too.” She thrust her face toward me, as though to affirm her own continued existence. “Did you know that?”

“I found it out.”

“Jack beat her to death, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you do. I can see it in your face. You don’t have to be so tight-mouthed with me. I was married to Jack, remember. I lived with him and his wildness for thirty years. Why do you think I started drinking? I was a teetotaler when we got married. I started drinking because I couldn’t bear the thought of the things he did.”

She leaned so close her eyes crossed. She had a cool way of saying outrageous things, but her version of events was too subjective to be entirely true. Still I wanted to hear more from her, and when she told me to finish my drink I did.

She went out to the kitchen and returned with another dose of the stuff for me, and another for her.

“What about those tapes?” she said. “Are they worth money?”

I made a quick decision. “They are to me.”

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“That isn’t very much.”

“The police won’t pay you anything for the tapes. I might raise my offer, depending on what’s on them. Have you played them back?”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

“I’m not telling. I need much more than a thousand. Now that Jack is dead and gone, I’m planning to do some traveling. He never took me anywhere, not once in the last fifteen years. And you know why? Whenever he went someplace, she was there waiting for him. Well, now she isn’t waiting any more.” After a moment, she added in mild surprise: “Jack isn’t waiting, either. They’re both dead, aren’t they? I wished it on them so often I can’t believe it happened.”

“It happened.”

“Good.”

She went through the motions of drinking a toast and stood swaying, tangle-footed. I took the glass from her hand and put it down on the table inset with stones.

“Sanctuary muchly.”

She did a little dance step to inaudible music. She seemed to be trying hard to find something to do that would make her feel human again.

“I never thought I’d feel sorry for her,” she said. “But I kind of do feel sorry for her. She resembled me, did you know that? I was much more beautiful when I was young, but Laurel had fifteen years on me. I used to pretend to myself that I was her in bed with Jack. But it wasn’t all fun and frolic even for her. He put her through the ropes and over the jumps just like he did with any of his women. And in the end he caved in her pretty face for her.”

“Do you really believe your husband did that?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” She plopped down on the settee beside me. “I could tell you things that would make your flesh crawl. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I hardly blame that boy for blowing his head off for him. You know who the boy is?”

“His father was Jasper Blevins. His mother was Laurel.”

“You’re smarter than I thought.” She gave me a crinkled look. “Or did I tell you all this the other night?”

“No.”

“I bet I did, though, didn’t I? Or did they tell you in the north county? It’s common knowledge in Rodeo City.”

“What is, Mrs. Fleischer?”

“Jack and his tricks. He was the law, there was no way they could stop him. He killed that Blevins man, shoved him under a train so he could have his wife. He got Laurel to say it wasn’t her husband’s body. He put their little boy in the orphanage, because he got in the way of the big romance.”

I didn’t believe her. I didn’t disbelieve her. Her words hung in the unreal room, perfectly at home there, but unconnected with the daylight world.

“How do you know all this?”

“Some of it I figured out for myself.” One of her eyes gave me a wise look: the other was half closed and idiotic. “I have friends in law enforcement, or used to have. Other deputies’ wives – they did some whispering.”

“Why didn’t their husbands bring your husband to book?”

The idiotic eye closed entirely in a frozen wink; she peered at my face with the wise one. “Jack knew where too many bodies were buried. The north county’s rough territory, mister, and he was the king of it. Anyway, what could they prove? The woman Laurel said the body didn’t belong to her husband. Said she never saw him before in her life. The head was all smashed up, unrecog–” She stumbled over the word “–unrecnizable. They put it down as just another accidental death.”

“Do you know for a fact it wasn’t?”

“I know what I know.” But her one closed eye seemed to mock her seriousness.

“Are you willing to pass this on to the police?”

“What would be the use? Jack’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”

“You’re not.”

“I wish I was.” The statement surprised or alarmed her. She opened both eyes and glared at me, as if I’d threatened her with loss of life.

“And Davy Spanner isn’t dead.”

“He soon will be. There’s a fifty-man posse out after him. I talked to Rory Pennell on the phone this morning. He promised they’d shoot to kill.”

“You want them to?”

“He killed Jack, didn’t he?”

“But you said you hardly blamed him.”

“Did I?” The question was directed to herself as well as me. “I couldn’t have. Jack was my husband.”

This was where I came in. Her single life and mind were as deeply split as her marriage had been. I got up to leave.

She followed me to the door. “What about the tapes?”

“What about them? Do you have them?”

“I think I can put my hands on them.”

“For a thousand?”

“It isn’t enough,” she said. “I’m a widow now, I have to look out for myself.”

“Let me play the tapes. Then I’ll make you another offer.”

“They’re not here.”

“Where are they?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Okay, sit on them. I’ll be back, or I’ll phone you. Do you remember my name?”

“Archer,” she said. “Jack Archer.”

I left it at that. She went back into the artificial twilight of her living room.