The Neon Jungle

Chapter Nineteen

The early-afternoon sun touched the gray stones. Bonny leaned against one and it dug into her back, but she did not mind. Paul’s head was in her lap, the curve of the nape of his neck fitting perfectly her convex thigh. His eyes were shut and he was in the shadow of her. She traced her finger lightly along the upper lid of his eye and he shifted a bit and made a contented sound.

“Of all places, my darling,” she said.

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

“In fact, the worst possible place. Because of the other day. Didn’t you know that?”

“You talk too much. Sure. Worst possible place. That’s why I picked it.”

He opened one eye and squinted up at her. “Mmm. Lovely colors. Blue sky, copper hair, gray eyes. Fine.”

“As I said once before, my man, you make me feel so damn girlish.”

“Technique. Make ’em all feel girlish. Lean over a bit farther. Like to see your hair swing out like that.”

She bent down and with a movement of her head drew the sheaf of hair across his mouth and upper lip.

He caught her hand and kissed each finger in turn. “Want to hear a confession?”

“Make it exciting, and I’ll listen.”

“Sure. Very exciting. Darmond is a cold guy. Picked the time and the place. Coldly. A lab experiment. Says to himself: If it works, I marry the girl.”

She felt very still. “Paul... I mean that’s very nice. I’m flattered and so on. But... smart buyers don’t want merchandise off the counter. They like it in the original wrappings. Hell, I mean this can go on as long as you like, and stop when you like. Isn’t that enough?”

“If it works, I marry the girl. So it works. In fact, I distinctly remember every tree over in those woods falling over simultaneously, though now they seem to be miraculously upright.” He looked up at her seriously. “It did work.”

“There are no words, my darling. May I be coarse? Anything that happened from the waist down was purely coincidental. What mattered was having my heart break in a zillion pieces and go zooming out through the top of my head.”

“It had to matter a lot — to you. You know why.”

“Of course I know why. And it did, Paul. Can you believe that?”

“I can’t believe otherwise.”

“Thank you, darling,” she said.

“Marriage, then. Sound institution.”

“You better think that over, Paul. For quite a long time.”

“O.K. Time me. Sixty seconds.”

“Sixty days, at least.”

He pursed his lips, then asked, “Would that actually make you feel better?”

“Yes. It would.”

“And if at the end of sixty days I still like the idea?”

“Then we will go ahead with it, Paul. And if we go ahead with it, I swear — I swear, my darling, that I will be a good wife. And if you change your mind, I will be anything you want me to be.”

He kissed her knuckles. “So be it.”

“Far away,” she said softly, “in a gloomy old world is a dismal market full of improbable people, and I should be there right now. But it doesn’t seem to matter as much as it should. I love you, Paul.”

“Oh, is that what it is? I love you, too.”

He sat up then and stood up and gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet. They kissed and in the middle of the kiss lost their balance, staggered, laughed.

“Strong poison, my man,” she said.

“Quick poison. Let’s get out of here before you never get back to work.”

As they drove back to the city she told him about not being able to sleep, about seeing Vern go to Jana after the truck had left. And he told her of his talk with Vern, and of the quite unexpected cooperation. And he told her of what Vern had implied, about someone else sharing Jana’s favors.

“Paul, I can’t quite believe that. Who would it be? Either Walter or Rick. Neither of them seems probable. Doris would scent something like that in a moment. And Rick Stussen seems so oddly unmasculine. Not a feminine type, just sort of — sexless.”

“Does Gus go out early another day this week?”

“Saturday morning.”

“Maybe Vern will see her then for the last time. And that time, the way fate usually handles these things, will be the time Gus forgets something and has to come back.”

“Oh, no!”

“We’ll just hope it works out all right. Hope he doesn’t try to stretch his luck, as long as he’s leaving Sunday anyway.”

He pulled up to the curb and watched her quick long-legged stride as she went into the market. He knew at once that he did not want her there. He knew that he would get her away from there at the very first opportunity. It was not the place for her to be. Not the place for his woman to be.

Vern sat on the edge of his bed at ten o’clock on Friday night and once again went over all the steps that had been taken, and all the ones that would have to be taken. The timing was the most delicate problem. If it were timed right, it would go off right.

On Thursday night he had emptied the fruit jars into a small cardboard carton. While in the cellar he had put the hypo box into one of the holes where a fruit jar had been and he had tamped the dirt down firmly afterward. He had wrapped the cardboard carton in brown paper, tied it with stout string, taken it down to the railroad station, and put it in a coin locker. He wore a brown belt with a trick spring device to give it elasticity. He had shoved the locker key into the leather sleeve of the belt that concealed the spring. The device of the cardboard carton had a flexibility that pleased him. It could be taken along or mailed to a predetermined address.

Darmond’s surprise accusation had rattled him badly. He hoped he had carried it off properly. It had become immediately necessary to find out how Darmond got the information. That had not been too difficult. He had caught Jana on the stairs an hour ago while the television was turned high.

She had not wanted to talk to him. He put one hand hard across her mouth and with the other he hurt her in a way he had been told about but had never tried before. It was alarmingly effective. When he released her, her face was the color of dirty soap and she could have fallen had he not grabbed her. Her color came back slowly. The threat of a second application made her willing to discuss the matter. It turned out that Bonny had gone to Jana, that something had made Bonny suspicious, and Jana, of course, had talked. So obviously Bonny had gone at once to Darmond.

The palms of his hands had begun to perspire. He rubbed them on a fresh handkerchief. At least the interview with Darmond had provided one advantage. It had given him a legitimate excuse, which Darmond would verify, for packing his belongings. The old suitcase and the new one were in the closet, side by side. He saw himself checking them in at one of those hotels he had seen in the movies. Cabanas ringing the pool. Women deep-tanned and drowsy on the bright poolside mats. It would be one of the places where gambling was legal. He would hit a dozen of the gilded spots and then after a couple of weeks present himself at the nearest office of the Internal Revenue people and, acting earnest and confused, say, “Look, I don’t want to get in any trouble, but I came out here looking for a job and I started gambling and I’ve made all this money and what do I do now?” They would take a large bit of it, but it would be worth it to give the cash a legitimate background, a reason for existence. Then, if a man was presentable and watched his step and had a little cash and dressed right, it wouldn’t be too hard to move in on one of those moneyed dolls out there, because the gambling towns were divorce mills, and inevitably there would be one who was not only stacked, but also loaded, and rebounding high enough to catch on the fly. Vernon Karl Lockter will be joined in holy wedlock to Mrs. Delightful Gelt. Then let the organization try any squeeze plays. If you had the backings, you could always buy off pressure. And that piece of paper would be no damn good anyway. And then no nonsense about trying to inherit her money. It was much simpler just to take it away from her.

He shelved the bright dream and went downstairs. The ten-thirty program was just ending and the others had gone to bed and Gus sat woodenly, watching the bright screen. As the closing commercial came on, Gus got up and walked over and turned the set off and stood watching the scene collapse to a hard bright spot and then fade into blackness.

“Can I talk to you a minute, Gus?”

The old man turned, apparently becoming aware for the first time of another person in the room. “Talk? Go on. Talk.”

“Not here, Gus.”

“Where?”

“Come on, Pop. Outside. Walk around the block.”

Gus stared at him and then shrugged and went with him. Vern walked beside him, and waited until they were a good hundred feet from the house.

“You’ve been swell to me, Gus. I appreciate it. I want to tell you something because... well, you’ve been swell to me, and I don’t like to have something going on without you knowing about it.”

Gus stopped with a streetlight slanting across his heavy face, emphasizing the brutal lines, erasing the kindliness.

“Talk plain, Vern.”

“I will. You know when you go out early in the morning and go to the farmers’ market?”

“Yes, yes. I know. Talk.”

“Well, when you leave, right after you leave, somebody sneaks into bed with your wife. Understand, I don’t know who it is.”

Gus did not move or speak. Vern thought perhaps the old guy hadn’t understood. He said, “Did you hear me?”

Gus made a low sound in his throat and turned back toward the house. Vern grabbed his wrist and said, “Wait a minute, Pop. Hold up a minute.”

Gus yanked his arm free with surprising strength. Vern trotted by him and turned and blocked the way, saying, “Wait!”

He had to walk backward, avoiding repeated attempts to thrust him out of the way until at last the old man stopped. “Wait for what? She do that to me? With these hands I—”

“No Pop. Don’t you get it? You got to find out who the guy is.”

“I beat it out of her.”

“That’s no good. Understand, I don’t have any proof.”

“Then how you know?”

“I got up early Thursday. I was going down the stairs and I looked down the hall and I saw somebody coming out of her room. A man. He saw me and dodged back in. It was too dark to see who it was. What good will it do if she denies everything? You got to catch them, Gus. That’s the best way.”

“How?”

“You don’t say anything, see? Tomorrow morning you get up at four, like always. I’ll wake up the kid when I go back and tell him not to wait downstairs for you in the morning. To go ahead and take the truck and drive it to that all-night gas station and fill it up and bring it back and you’ll be waiting. Then you don’t go downstairs. What you do is go upstairs. Just to the landing. We’ll wait there and see if anybody comes. See? Then you got the proof.”

“My Jana. I cannot think she— Ah, my God, the trouble! All trouble. Everything. Henry. My Teena. Jana. Ah, my God!”

“Do it my way, Gus.”

After a long time the man nodded. “Your way, then.”

After they went back Vern stood nervously on the stairs near the second-floor landing, listening for sounds of violence. The house was still. When he was certain that the old man would do it his way, he knew that the most ticklish part of it was done.

He went quietly down and through the house and went into Rick’s room without knocking and turned on the light. Rick sat bolt upright, squinting, his mouth open with surprise.

“What’s the matter, Vern? What’s the matter?”

Vern sat on the foot of the bed and said in a low tone, “Relax, dearie. Nothing’s wrong.” He lit a cigarette and gave Rick a crooked smile. “Guilty conscience or something?”

“What do you want, waking me up?”

“You got an alarm clock?”

Rick pointed to it. “Sure.”

“Gus wants you to go along with him in the morning. Something about picking up a big meat order. Here, I’ll set it for four. He wants you to get up and go up and wake him up. Got that?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t knock and don’t turn on any lights. Just go on in there quiet like a mouse and shake him.”

“O.K.”

“I told him I’d give you the word.” Vern got up and went to the door and turned and said, “Don’t let it bother you if you hear the truck drive out, Rick. I heard him telling the kid to take it over and gas it up and bring it back to pick up you two.”

He turned off the light and closed the door behind him. He felt excited, tensed up, very alive. He went quietly out through the kitchen and the shed and into the store. He drifted by the shadowy racks and went behind the meat case and took hold of the hard greasy handle of the meat cleaver and wrested the blade out of the chopping block. He hefted it for a moment in his hand, and then unbuttoned the bottom button of his shirt and put the cleaver inside, its blade resting chill against his skin.

It was at that moment that he had a sudden doubt. In spite of all the careful planning, he realized he had made one very stupid and obvious mistake. There had been absolutely no need to have anything to do with Jana. It could have been worked in precisely the same way without even touching her. And that would have removed certain elements of risk. Suppose the old man didn’t kill her. She could chatter and the old man could chatter, and that goddamn Rowell could add the two stories together and come up with a bad answer. If he’d never touched her, she wouldn’t be able to do anything but deny having anything to do with Stussen. And with the old man finding Stussen in his bedroom, her story would look sick. He wondered why he had made such an obvious mistake. He stood silently until the doubt began to fade. The old man would be as insane as you could make anyone. And it was pretty damn certain that he wouldn’t leave anything alive in the room.

He went back and up the stairs and hid the cleaver in his room and woke up the kid and told him to take the truck over and gas it up and bring it back to pick up the old man in the morning. He gave the kid a five-dollar bill for the gas. When he got back in his room it was a quarter after twelve. He turned out the table lamp and sat on the bed in the darkness. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not when there was so little time left.