The Magician's Wife

14

But having reached his dreadful decision, he entered a new phase, with qualms pushed aside, and no thought in his mind but the deed he intended to do — and, in fact, was as detached about it as he might have been about a campaign to sell meat. By day he talked with Hal, Miss Helm, and Pat, in long phone conversations. By night he drove with Sally, listening as she prattled, as devoid of guilt as he was, of the enormous estate the Gorsuch will had disclosed when filed for probate after the funeral, and of the adventure they had embarked on. Her scheme, as she explained it the next evening they had, was a car crash they would contrive, which would take Mr. Alexis’ life but at the same time “look perfectly natural.” They could take advantage, she thought, of a quirk in his driving taste, which led him to use an old road, a black-top long since condemned, one of the old original routes from the time of Governor Crothers, which he preferred “for its peace and quiet, as there’s no traffic on it, especially in early morning, when he comes home from work.” So together they had a look, entering the stretch in question a few miles south of Baltimore, ‘at their own risk,’ as a big sign informed them. For some distance it ran through meadows that showed green on both sides, being almost on a level with them. But then it began to rise, over a considerable fill, as it passed over a marsh, with water backed up on each side. Then it popped on a bridge, an iron thing over a slough, that rattled and clanked and shook from the weight of the car. Then more marsh, more meadow, and the outskirts of Channel City.

Her idea was a roadblock “that we make by parking the car, at the top of the fill near the bridge, but not a full roadblock, just kind of half-and-half, so instead of stopping dead, he pulls out enough to pass. But the condition that shoulder is in, it could give way under him and spill him down in the water. And so — that would be it.” He considered this, parking up near the bridge, examining the fill with a flashlight, and in all ways being thorough. At last he said: “No — it’s too risky and has too little chance of succeeding. In the first place, he could stop dead, recognize us, and be warned from then on, so there’d be no way to get him. Or he could pull out and the fill not give way — it doesn’t have to, and we can’t be sure it will. Or it might give way and he might go down with it, but not till he banged this car, and then we would be in it. Sally, what’s basically wrong is it doesn’t have audacity. It lacks that one thing that could let us win, the means of achieving surprise, which is what a thing of this kind has to have.” She drank all this in, doting, for she detected not a case of cold feet but hardening resolution. But, winding up their evening’s work, he observed: “This stretch of road, though, could win for us. Let’s work on it, think — see what use we can make of it.”

Next night, crossing the bridge southbound, he stopped, and then suddenly cut his lights. When his eyes were used to the dark, he told her: “Something occurred to me: that we could come up on his flank, creep up without being seen, bang our horn, and make him cut his wheel. If surprised, he has to cut — it’s an instinctive thing — and his regular driving speed will carry him out on the shoulder before he can brake to a stop. It’s a matter of two or three feet. But we have to run dark — unless we cut our lights they’ll show in his mirror, and surprise will get knocked in the head. And the question is, Can we run without lights without landing ourselves in the ditch? Well, nothing beats a trial. Are you game?” She whispered she was and he pulled into gear. By that time the stars were brightly visible, as well as various lights, particularly the bright red sign of Chanciteco, as the Channel City Electric Company was called, which glowed in the sky dead ahead. He let in his clutch and started rolling along, while she gripped her arm rest, tense but silently acquiescent. Their progress was bumpy, as the road was full of potholes, especially out toward the side, but they stayed on it, and gradually he increased his speed. Back in civilization again, he pulled over and stopped. “What do you think?” he asked.

“It can be done,” she whispered.

“Then, that’s how we set it up.”

He made his U-turn and started back for another practice run, quickly discovering the thing was impossible northbound, as no pattern of lights would help him. “So what do we care?” he snapped. “Southbound is how he goes, so southbound is how we rehearse.” They practiced again and again, until he was fairly confident and could get himself up to forty, “which is average driving speed,” he said, “at least on this road.” But when she blandly observed, “Then we’re set,” he cautioned: “Not quite. There’s more to it than learning to drive by that sign, and the better we lay it out, the better our chances are. Remember that gang robbing a bank. They take months laying it out — casing the joint, as they call it — running the roads, timing all the details, so nothing is left to chance, and everyone’s caught by surprise except them. That’s why they’re so seldom caught.” The next thing, he said, was to find out if without running their lights they could follow a car and then come up beside it. Occasionally cars did appear on the road, and these they began closing in on, making the pleasing discovery that this feat was somewhat easier than running the road in the dark. “Their lights show you the way,” he whispered to her delightedly. “There’s nothing to it if you’re willing to take the chance.” He pulled up beside some of these cars, and she became greatly excited. “They don’t see you!” she told him. “None of them do — I can tell from the way they drive.”

And then one night they pulled up behind a car, a small blue coupe, and suddenly he whispered: “O.K., I’m going to pull it — see whether this thing works, here where the bank’s not high and nobody’s going to get killed. Watch this guy now — I can’t. I must keep my eye on the road. Watch him and see what he does.”

Driving by the taillight ahead, he ran up close and pulled left. Then, steering by the other car’s headlights, he slipped up beside it. Then, pressing the horn, he let go a dreadful blast. The headlights whipped off to one side, then went out. There came a loud clanking, as of metal banging on metal. A furious yell cut the dark. He stamped on his brake, stopping, as the lights’ disappearance left him suddenly blind. But in a moment he started creeping forward and at the bridge put on his lights. “O.K.,” he whispered. “What did he do? What happened?”

“Went off, that’s all.”

“Down the bank, you mean?”

“Down on the grass. That’s right.”

“And? What else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

“Is he there, or what?”

“Well, do we care?”

“You bet we care — if someone’s killed, it’s investigated. If not, it’s just one of those things. Is he there? Sally, I asked you to look!”

“Well, I did look. Yes, he’s there!”

“Doing what?”

“Cursing at us! Can’t you hear?”

“God, what a help you are!”

“You stop godding at me!” And then, as he sniffed at an odor that filled the car. “Yeah, Clay, that’s it — you smell something, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. What is it?”

“Adrenaline — from me. Little oversecretion I’m subject to occasionally. Things affect me that way sometimes. Like the bang I got, Clay, when that jerk went down off the road, and I knew it was going to work, this thing we’ve been fixing up. You’ll never know what you did to me... Gives me a funny smell — like a rattlesnake, kind of. Want some nice rattlesnake love?”

“Sally, quit talking like that!”

“Can I help how I feel?”

“Ask how I felt, why don’t you? I was scared blue.”

“Oh, no, Clay, not you!”

“Oh, I was. My mock-orange blood, no doubt.”

“Now you quit talking like that!”

He talked like that quite volubly, but had no will to resist her, and drove to the apartment, though they had made it a rule these nights to meet out on the street at some prearranged point, she jumping into his car and later jumping out — lest, without knowing it, she was under surveillance.

It was now the middle of August, with the calendar forcing their hand, for not only would Mrs. Granlund shortly return, bringing the child with her, but also the nightclub would change its bill the night after Labor Day, so the victim-to-be would be later starting for home. So they had to make things definite and, when they did, found forced upon them change from the original plan. They had assumed they would do it together, but one night he told her: “If something goes wrong, Sally, and I’m in my car alone, it could still be an accident, couldn’t it? A traffic-court case, no worse. But if you’re in there with me, nothing can possibly save us. It’ll be prima-facie premeditation, and what we get will be plenty. So, I have to go it alone.” After studying him and deciding it was not a case of cold feet, she said: “O.K.” But that brought up the related question of alibis. “If you’re not coming with me,” he argued, “then you ought to go further, and fix yourself up with witnesses who can prove you were home all the time and couldn’t have been in it at all.” She asked about his alibi, and he assured her: “I’ll have one, never fear. But my alibi is easier — I live in an apartment house where a switchboard girl is on duty, and all I have to do is have her see me come in, maybe play a scene with her, to fix the date in her mind, and then slip out the back way, so no one knows about it. Of course I’ll slip in the back way too when it’s over. My problem is simple, if anything ever is. But yours involves people who’ll have to swear they saw you that night, at the time when it’s to happen. It means, I would say, you have to invite them in and keep them there somehow, so they’ll be able to clear you.”

She agreed, and they presently set the night for the Monday preceding Labor Day. However, one thing kept gnawing at him, which was Mr. Alexis’ driving habits. He knew the Alexis car, having seen it the day of the visit, and she gave him the license number so there could be no mistake. But there was still the question of potholes on the stretch of condemned road, and what Alexis did about them. If, to avoid them, he drove in the middle, the whole thing was in the soup, as Clay knew by that time that he could not pull up from behind on a car driven that way without landing himself in the ditch — not a happy prospect. But it was a question of fact, not to be settled by guesswork. So one evening, without telling Sally, he parked near the Harlow Theater, to watch his victim come out and follow him up to work, so he would know. It was around six, and he didn’t have long to wait. Mr. Alexis came out the front door, sauntering down the walk, while Sally trotted after him, still in her Portico dress, and backed his car from the garage. Then followed a scene that Clay hated to watch. From up the street came a whistle and then running feet, as eight to a dozen kids trooped up and began dancing up and down. Mr. Alexis, in black tie and Homburg, stared as though in surprise, then took a red ball from his pocket and passed it around. The children examined it closely, bounced it on the sidewalk, and presently handed it back. Mr. Alexis then made motions with it, up and down and crosswise, then gave an exclamation, as two balls were there in his hand. The miracle was greeted with squeals, and he handed the ball back, magnanimously letting them keep it. Then, patting each child on the head, he took lollipops from their ears, causing more squeals, even louder. “Goddam it, don’t go soft!” Clay told himself. “You’re in this thing, you’re in it!... She could have told me about it, though.”

He followed the Alexis car, a big maroon sedan, noting its speed, which stayed at an easy 35. On the stretch of condemned road it picked up a bit, but stayed in the right-hand lane, not veering to the middle. In south Baltimore Clay let it pull ahead, so it reached the Lilac Flamingo first. The club was on Redwood, just off the Little Ginza, which Baltimore calls The Block, and was in a remodeled building, originally perhaps a garage. It had a parking lot at one side, with entrance on Redwood and exit on the cross street. Clay stopped near the exit and, the hour being early, found space for his car at the curb. Mr. Alexis had already parked on the lot, in the space next to the attendant’s shack that Sally had said he used. After lighting a cigarette he sauntered to the club, going in by a rear door. But Clay wasn’t quite finished yet with his early-evening reconnaissance. There was still the question of Buster and how she affected the plan. Mr. Alexis, according to Sally, always walked her home after winding up at the club, and after visiting with her, walked back to his car for the drive to Channel City, “around two o’clock, as a rule.” But it seemed important to Clay, if he were to watch as planned, at the wheel of his parked car, to know all about that walk, especially its direction, so he would know which way to look. So he had looked up Buster in the Baltimore telephone book and now walked to her place, four or five blocks away. It was a small apartment house, with fire escapes showing, on a cross street north of The Block, near Fayette. He started to walk by, then changed his mind, bounded up the stairs, and entered the vestibule. Here, lighting a match, he peered at the names on the mailboxes. Sure enough, the card in one read EDITH CONLON. He blew out his match, stepped down to the sidewalk again, and went on to the corner of Fayette, where he stood for a moment, noting parking conditions, just in case. Then he turned and started back. And then, to his horror, who should come mincing out of the apartment house doorway but Buster, in another sleeveless dress, blue socklets instead of red, and tan shoes instead of white. Her eyes shone with delight when she saw him. “Why, Mr. Lockwood!” she cried.

“Miss Conlon,” he said gravely. “How do you do?”

“I told you, call me Buster,” she chided him. “Busty Buster, to my friends.” Casually, yet with a touch of pride, she bulged the why of her sobriquet, then went on: “But don’t worry, I’ll keep on calling you Mister — I don’t embarrass no one. And yet at the same time I’m surprised at seeing you here, in among the ginmills, hotspots, and iniquity dens! For some reason I wouldn’t have thought it of you.

“Buster, I sell these pirates meat.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot.”

“Their money’s as good as anyone’s.”

“And better in some ways — at least there’s plenty of it.” And then, leaning close: “Did you see that piece in the paper?”

“I did. Did you see the retraction, Buster?”

“Oh! That was your doing, then?”

“I hope to tell you it was.”

He wanted to shake her, yet couldn’t quite suppress the smugness of his growl or resist her reaction to it. She was ecstatic in admiration, her “Aw, aw” fairly pulsating with it. Then suddenly she whispered: “Listen!” And then, looking around, noting the passers-by, she pulled him into a doorway, the entrance of a dingy office building, dark in the gathering dusk. Then, mysteriously, her arm around his neck, her mouth pressed close, she breathed: “You know who put it in? The wife, that’s who!”

“Oh? You mean Mr. Alexis’ wife?”

“He has one. Didn’t you hear?”

“Well, I don’t know too much about him.”

“Oh, a bitch from Bitchenville, Delaware — trying to louse me up. And here’s where it gets good: maybe she did. Mr. Lockwood, I could be due for the gate.”

“From the — act?”

“Call it that — it’s a very nice way to put it. Because things have changed lately. His father died, you know, in a most unfortunate way. By accident, so it was said. But maybe not, if you know what I mean. Maybe he got some help, just the least little push. And is Sonny Boy sore about that? Don’t make me laugh, Mr. Lockwood. He was sore, but then he began to be glad. He’s grateful to that dame — look at the dough she made him. He’s thinking of taking her back. Now, how do you like that?”

“It’s a free country, Buster.”

“Yeah, for cashew nuts — and all kinds.”

She kept studying him, then gave him a pull and pointed. “You see that place?” she asked. “The one I just now came out of? That’s where I live, Mr. Lockwood. Why don’t you come-up-’n-simmy-some-time?”

He laughed at the Mae West imitation, said: “Well, I’m sure I’d enjoy it at that.”

“You might surprise yourself!”

She pulled him back in the murk again, circled his neck again with her arm, whispered: “You’re going West, the papers said. You might need someone out there — that calls you Mr. Lockwood — that wouldn’t make any trouble — that would kind of look out for you — in a nice little place she would have — where you could relax and have fun.”

“... I’ll think about it, Buster.”

“Will you? Sure enough?”

“Did — the overhead stuff get installed?”

“Yeah, but we needn’t go into that!”

Her manner implied a long story, which was more than he bargained for, so he didn’t pursue the subject. Instead, he glanced at his watch, said: “Got to be running along.”

“Me too — I’m due at the club. Put on my fish-net tights and handle props for him.” Then, with childish pride: “I look good in them!” She lifted her skirt quite high, to show soft, chubby legs, really quite pretty. She laughed when he looked away, put her arms around him again, said: “Listen, I go for you! How many times must I say it?”

“I — go for you too, Buster.”

“I’m in the book — ring me.”

“If I can make it, I’d like that.”

“I’m home in the daytime.”

“I’ll remember.”

“And I’m free in the daytime, too.”

Suddenly she pulled him to her, gave him a long, wet kiss. He kissed back, not quite knowing why. It seemed the polite thing to do, and was also unexpectedly enjoyable.

“So he thinks he may take her back, and how do you know he won’t? How do you know she won’t? How do you know anything in connection with this dame? Because maybe you love her, but the extent to which she can be trusted is scarcely visible to the naked eye. You’d better get it done, get this thing over with — until you do, you’re nowhere.”

He had raced home, changed, bathed, and doused himself with cologne, to be rid of every last trace of Buster’s cloying perfume, in preparation for his 9:30 date with Sally. But the eyes that stared from the mirror were beginning to look a bit wild.