The Instant Enemy

chapter 5

THE CARD ON THE DOOR of Apartment One said: “Mrs. Laurel Smith.” She opened the door on a chain and growled at me:

“You drove him away. I hope you’re satisfied.”

“You mean they’re gone for good?”

“I’m not talking to you.”

“I think you’d better. I’m not a troublemaker by choice, but trouble can be made. If Davy Spanner’s on probation, he broke it when he swung on me.”

“You were asking for it.”

“That depends on which side you’re on. You’re obviously on Davy’s side. In which case you better cooperate with me.”

She thought about this. “Cooperate how?”

“I want the girl. If I get her back in reasonable shape, in a reasonable period of time – like today – I won’t bear down hard on Davy. Otherwise I will.”

She unhooked the chain. “Okay, Mr. God. Come in. The place is a mess but then so are you.”

She smiled with one side of her mouth and one eye. I think she wanted to be angry with me, but so many things had happened in her life that she couldn’t stay angry. One of the things that had happened to her, I could tell by her breath, was alcohol.

The clock on her mantel said it was half past ten. The clock was under a bell jar, as if to shield Laurel Smith from the passage of time. The other things in the living room, the overstuffed furniture and the gewgaws and the litter of magazines, had an unlived-with feeling. It was like a waiting room where you couldn’t relax, for fear that the dentist would call you in any minute. Or the psychiatrist.

The small television set in one corner of the room was on, with the sound turned off. Laurel Smith said apologetically:

“I never used to watch TV. But I won this thing in a contest a couple of weeks ago.”

“What kind of a contest?”

“One of those telephone contests. They called me up and asked me what was the capital of California. I said Sacramento, and they told me I’d won a portable TV set, just like that. I thought it was a gag, but within the hour they turned up here with the set.”

She switched it off. We sat facing each other at opposite ends of the chesterfield.

There was a cloudy glass on the coffee table between us. The picture window behind us was full of blue sky and blue sea.

“Tell me about Davy.”

“There isn’t much to tell. I took him on a couple of months ago.”

“In what sense took him on?”

“To do the clean-up work around the place. He needed a part-time job, he’s planning to start at junior college the first of the year. You wouldn’t know it the way he acted this morning, but he’s an ambitious young man.”

“Did you know he’d been in jail when you hired him?”

“Naturally I did. That’s what got me interested in his case. I’ve had my own share of troubles–”

“Troubles with the law?”

“I didn’t say that. And let’s not talk about me, eh? I’ve had a little luck in real estate, and I like to spread the luck around a little. So I gave Davy a job.”

“Have you talked to him at any length?”

She let out a short laugh. “Til say I have. That boy will talk your arm off.”

“What about?”

“Any subject. His main subject is how the country is going to the dogs. He may be right at that. He says his time in jail gave him a worm’s-eye view of the whole business.”

“He sounds like a poolroom lawyer to me.”

“Davy’s more than that,” she said defensively. “He’s more than just a talker. And he isn’t the poolroom type. He’s a serious boy.”

“What’s he serious about?”

“He wants to grow up and be a real man and do something useful.”

“I think he’s conning you, Mrs. Smith.”

“No.” She shook her artificial head. “He isn’t conning me. He may be conning himself a little. God knows he’s got his problems. I’ve talked to his probation officer–” She hesitated.

“Who is his probation officer?”

“I forget his name.” She went to the telephone directory in the hall and consulted the front of it. “Mr. Belsize. Do you know him?”

“We’ve met. He’s a good man.”

Laurel Smith sat down nearer me. She seemed to be warming up slightly, but her eyes were still watchful. “Mr. Belsize admitted to me that he was taking a chance on Davy. Recommending him for probation, I mean. He said Davy might make it and then again he might not. I said I was willing to take my chances, too.”

“Why?”

“You can’t just live for yourself. I found that out.” A sudden smile lit her face. “I sure picked a hot potato, didn’t I?”

“You sure did. Did Belsize say what was the matter with him?”

“He has emotional trouble. When he gets mad he thinks we’re all his enemies. Even me. He never lifted his hand against me, though. Or anybody else until this morning.”

“That you know of.”

“I know he’s been in trouble in the past,” she said. “But I’m willing to give him the benefit. You don’t know what that boy’s been through – orphanages and foster homes and getting kicked around. He never had a home of his own, he never had a father or a mother.”

“He still has to learn to handle himself.”

“I know that. I thought you were beginning to sympathize.”

“I do sympathize, but that won’t help Davy. He’s playing house and other games with a young girl. He’s got to bring her back. Her parents could hang a rap on him that would put him away until he’s middle-aged.”

She pressed her hand against her breast. “We can’t let that happen.”

“Where would he have taken her, Mrs. Smith?”

“I don’t know.”

She raked her dyed head with her fingers, then rose and went to the picture window. With her back to me, her body was simply an object, an odalisque shape against the light. Framed in dark-red curtains, the sea looked old as the Mediterranean, old as sin.

“Has he brought her here before?” I said to her black-and-orange back.

“He brought her to introduce her to me last week – week before last.”

“Were they planning to get married?”

“I don’t think so. They’re too young. I’m sure Davy has other plans.”

“What are his plans?”

“I told you, about going to school and all. He wants to be a doctor or a lawyer.”

“He’ll be lucky if he just stays out of jail.”

She turned to me, clutching and pulling at her hands. Their friction made a dry anxious sound. “What can I do?”

“Let me search his apartment.”

She was silent for a minute, looking at me as if she found it hard to trust a man.

“I guess that is a good idea.”

She got her keys, a heavy clinking loop like an overgrown charm bracelet. The card with “David Spanner” written on it was missing from his door. That seemed to imply that he wasn’t coming back.

The apartment was a single room with two convertible beds at right angles in a corner. Both beds had been slept in and left unmade. Mrs. Smith pulled back the covers and examined the sheets.

“I can’t tell if they were sleeping together,” she said.

“I assume they were.”

She gave me a worried look. “The girl isn’t Quentin quail, is she?”

“No. But if he takes her someplace against her will – or if she wants out and he uses force–”

“I know, that’s kidnapping. But Davy wouldn’t do that to her. He likes her.”

I opened the closet. It was empty.

“He didn’t have much in the way of clothes,” she said. “He didn’t care about clothes and things like that.”

“What did he care about?”

“Cars. But on probation he isn’t allowed to drive. I think that’s one reason he took up with the girl. She has a car.”

“And her father had a shotgun. Davy has it now.”

She turned so quickly that the skirt of her housecoat flared out. “You didn’t tell me that before.”

“What makes it so important?”

“He might shoot somebody.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“He doesn’t know anybody,” she said foolishly.

“That’s good.”

I went through the rest of the place. There were sliced ham and cheese and milk in the little refrigerator in the kitchenette. I found a few books on the desk by the window: The Prophet, and a book about Clarence Darrow, and one about an American doctor who had built a hospital in Burma. Meager wings to fly on.

Tacked up over the desk was a list of ten “Don’ts.” They were written out in the precise hand I recognized as Davy’s:

“You see what kind of a boy he is?” Laurel said at my shoulder. “A real trier.”

“You’re fond of him, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer directly. “You’d like him, too, if you only got to know him.”

“Maybe.” Davy’s list of self-regulations was kind of touching, but I read it with a different eye from Laurel’s. The boy was beginning to know himself, and didn’t like what he saw.

I went through the desk. It was empty except for a sheet of paper jammed into the back of the bottom drawer. I spread it out on the desk top. It was covered with a map, crudely drawn in ink, of a ranch or large estate. Its various features were labeled in a girlish unformed hand: “main house,” “garage with L.’s apt.,” “artificial lake and dam,” “road from highway” passing through a “locked gate.”

I showed the map to Laurel Smith. “Does this mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.” But her eyes had grown small and intent. “Should it?”

“It looks as if they’ve been casing some joint.”

“More likely they were just doodling.”

“Some doodle.” I folded the map and put it in my inside pocket.

“What are you going to do with that?” she said.

“Find the place. If you know where it is you could save me a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t,” she said abruptly. “Now if you’re finished in here, I’ve got other things to do.”

She stood by the door till I went out. I thanked her. She shook her head gloomily; “You’re not welcome. Listen, how much would you take to lay off Davy? Lay off the whole damn business?”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. I’ll give you five hundred.”

“No.”

“A thousand? A thousand cash, no taxes to pay.”

“Forget it.”

“A thousand cash and me. I look better without my clothes on.” She nudged my arm with her breast. All it did was make my kidneys hurt.

“It’s a handsome offer but I can’t take it. You’re forgetting about the girl. I can’t afford to.”

“To hell with her and to hell with you.” She walked away to her apartment, swinging her keys.

I went into the garage. Against the dim rear wall was a workbench littered with tools: hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, a hacksaw. A small vise was attached to the bench. Under it and around it, bright new iron filings mixed with sawdust were scattered on the concrete floor.

The filings suggested a queer idea to my mind. I made a further search, which ended up in the rafters of the garage. Wrapped in a dirty beach towel and a rolled-up carpet remnant I found the two barrels and the stock which Davy had sawed off the shotgun. They gave me an ugly moment: they were like the leavings of a major amputation.