The Magician's Wife

16

He mumbled that as he drove, but forgetting it turned out easier said than done, and his demoralized state continued all the way home. He found his parking space still clear, but had to battle the car into it, backing, pulling up, cutting his wheels, backing again, pulling up again, until he thought he would scream, before he succeeded in snugging in. Then came the “thirty-nine steps,” as he had called them in his anticipation — the walk to the Marlborough alley, on which if he met anyone, or at least someone he knew, it all would go by the board, alibi and everything else, and he might just as well cash his chips. He met no one — on the street, in the alley, on the stairs, or in the hallways, as he pad-padded to his door. At last, inside, he gave a gasp of relief, then raced for the bath, where everything came up, in endless spasms of retching. At last he could rinse out his mouth, go into the bedroom, and undress. He put on pajamas, crept into bed, pulled the covers over his head, and then remembered that one last thing he still had to do. He must put stopples in his ears to account for his failure to answer, in case his phone had rung: “I always use them — they blot out the noise.” It had sounded so casual, as rehearsed in his mind, but now merely seemed slick. However, he opened the package he’d bought at the drugstore, mashed a pair in his fingers, and stuffed them in. Saved, in the morning, they would prove he couldn’t have heard anything.

In bed again, he tried to think of Sally, to imagine himself with her, and how happy they would be, “once the damned thing has blown over.” He couldn’t seem to see her. What came to mind was Buster, the sweetish perfume she used, her softness as she unabashedly rubbed against him, and the spittly wetness of her kiss. And when at last he did manage to sleep, what woke him was her scream, all but splitting his ears, and easily going through stopples. In the morning he lay late, but then at last got up, bathed his bloodshot eyes, and after dressing went again to the drugstore, for breakfast. Buying the morning paper there, he found nothing in it at all about the previous night’s occurrence, and persuaded himself the car hadn’t been found — “may be two or three days before someone spots it, down underneath in that water.” But when he paid his check, the noon edition of The Pilot was just being rolled off the truck, and he reeled as he saw the headlines, which told how Mr. Alexis was “dead in car mishap,” but how “girl alleged foul play.” Buying one and reading as he walked home, he learned how Buster, told to jump by her companion, had managed to hurl herself out on the bank, where she lay for some moments unconscious. But what froze the blood in his veins was the brief paragraph that followed:

Under sedation at Channel City Hospital, Miss Conlon was not available for comment, and police refused to confirm or deny that she had observed the license number of the car which forced them off. However, as they promised a statement later, it is believed she did obtain the number, and that when it has been checked out, an arrest may be made.

“So there IS one thing worse than a girl getting killed in that car, and that’s a girl NOT getting killed. Boy, are you in the soup. You thought that hubcap could burn you, and now it turns out that it will — it’s twenty feet under water, and still it’ll pull the switch. Why the hell couldn’t you leave it? Why did you have to wait till you had it?”

He called Miss Helm, managed to sound like himself as he asked her to beg off for him, “with Hal Daley and the rest — just say I’m taking a day off.” She promised to take care of things for him and he thanked her once more “for what you did last night.” Then he hung up and lay on the bed, slavering at the mouth and wiping it out with tissues. A long time went by, and then in midafternoon his phone started to ring. He let it, but then when it rang a second time and after that a third, he felt he had to answer. He was startled to hear Sally, as it had been part of their plan that neither would ring the other “till everything quiets down.” However, she had been due to ring Buster at three o’clock in the morning to inquire if Mr. Alexis was there, and then, on learning he wasn’t, to call the police. Now, in spite of himself, Clay was sharp, telling her: “How many times must I say it? Your phone could be bugged! From — that other time! You know what I’m talking about!”

“Clay, I’m not calling from home! I’m in a phone booth out on the street! Now will you stop yacking at me and listen?”

“Did you put in the call to Buster?”

“I did, but haven’t you seen the papers?”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

“Clay, I have to see you.”

“Listen, Sally, that’s all it needs! I—”

“Damn it, I have to see you!”

“O.K., I’ll pick you up and—”

“You will not. I’m coming to you!”

“No, Sally! Please!”

“Clay, today of all days, I can’t be hanging around on some street corner waiting for you! They’re after me to question me! The cops — and I can’t be where they can grab me! I’m coming to you — I’ll come in the back way but I’m coming! Now you stay there and wait for me!”

“Suppose the cops come for me?”

“It’s a chance I have to take — so you hear?”

“O.K., but get it over with!”

He opened the door on a crack, began walking around. In a few minutes it closed, and she was there in the room with him, crisp in a blue summer dress, a little white shell on her head. She didn’t offer her mouth, and he made no move to claim it. “Clay,” she said quietly, “I hate to say so, but this has to be good-by.”

“Has to be? It is. Until we start to fry.”

“... That’s what I came about.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s turned out.”

“Ah — Clay, I don’t intend to fry.”

“Have you told the judge about that?”

“Clay, will you listen to me?”

“O.K., shoot.”

“Don’t try to drag me in!”

“Drag you in? You are in!”

“Oh, no, Clay, not at all. There’s not one single, solitary thing to connect me with what you did — with Alec’s death — in any way, shape, or form. I can prove I had nothing to do with it — in ways I haven’t mentioned to you — all kinds of different ways, which will prove me innocent — which of course I really am. The way you messed it up, I certainly can’t blame myself.”

“... In what way did I mess it?”

“Leaving that girl to tell tales!”

“I didn’t know she was there — had no idea at all. She didn’t belong to be there. When I pulled out, she was having a row with him for going off without her!”

“Haven’t you read the papers yet?”

“Little. Not all.”

“They did have a row, so she told the cops, and she jumped in the car, to be mean. He headed for home, as he planned, telling her she was quite welcome, but her tagging along would cost him a million bucks in the settlement I would ask. So she changed her mind and made it up in the car, and he was to set her down when they got to Channel City and send her home by cab, fish-net tights and all. Then it happened. She says he told her to jump, which she was able to do because part of her meanness was refusing to fasten her seat belt, as he had begged her to do. Oh, she gave the cops an earful, really tore their hearts — including the license number of the car that forced them off. So that would appear to be you. Oh, boy! Messing it up? You—”

“Yeah? And what would you have done?”

“What would that gang have done?”

“What gang, for God’s sake?”

“The gang, Clay, that you kept talking about? That was going to rob a bank? And planned everything, down to the gnat’s heel. They—”

“Would have done what?”

“Knocked her in the head, I would think.”

“And that’s what you’d have done?”

“If it was me or her? You bet it’s what I’d have done.”

“Sally, I think you’re nuts.”

“Me nuts? Me nuts?”

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t have.”

He repeated: “I didn’t know she was there. I did hear her scream, but supposed she went down with the car. But I wouldn’t have — I don’t do things like that.”

“Like that? How about killing Alec?”

“That was — different.”

“How different?”

“Damn it, he was your idea!”

“And so was she — or would have been.”

“I couldn’t have made myself do it!”

She switched around some moments, not quite so crisp or collected in her movements now, but still under control. “Well,” she went on in a moment, “that’s all water under the mill. You didn’t, that’s the main thing, so there’s no use talking about it. Do you have it straight, Clay, what I said before? Don’t try to drag me in, as it’s not going to work at all.”

“I have it straight, what you said and what you intend, or think you intend, at least. But now I’ll tell you something: if you think, after the way you’ve stood by me here now after it’s done — if you think I’m going to burn and keep my big mouth shut, so you go scot-free and on top of that get the money, you’re mistaken. Sally, we had a slip-up, and no one regrets it more than I do. But we were in it together, and that’s where we stay, my sweet. You’ll burn, you little bitch — because I’ll burn you. Now kindly get the hell out.”

“No! No! Don’t you try!”

“You started this thing! I’ll finish it!”

“I didn’t start it! You did!”

Control vanished then as she shook him, pleaded with him, and wailed. He said: “Your adrenaline’s acting up — excitement seems to affect you. You’re beginning to stink, and a rat knows a rattlesnake, baby. So, shove off.”

“You son of a bitch. You—”

But she cut off when he grabbed her, took her handbag away, unzipped it, and spilled it out on the table. Spotting his key, he pocketed it, then stuffed tissues, candy mints, handkerchiefs, memos, and the rest of the bag’s contents back into it. Then, handing it to her, he said: “Move, or I’m kicking you higher than—”

She went, and he watched her down the hall as she ran to the freight elevator. Then he closed the door.

“Why the hell haven’t they come?”