The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 8

Ben Merriman’s name was written in red neon across the cornice of a narrow pink stucco building. It was in a gap-toothed section of rundown houses and vacant lots and struggling businesses. A dog hospital stood next to Merriman’s office. Diagonally across the street, a drive-in swarmed with cutdown cars and their owners.

I locked the door of my car: I had a seventy-five-dollar microphone in the dash compartment. Dogs barked. I could smell pesticide.

A light outlined a closed door in a partition at the back of Merriman’s place. The glass front door was locked. I tapped on the glass with my car keys, and the door in the partition opened. Spilled light made a faceless silhouette of the woman who came uncertainly towards me. She fumbled at the self-lock and got it open.

“Is Mr. Merriman here?”

“No, he isn’t,” she said in a monotone.

“Can you tell me where to find him?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve been waiting for him for the last hour-and-a-half.” Resentment cracked her voice. She swallowed it. “Are you a client of Mr. Merriman’s?”

“A prospective one, maybe. I’m interested in some property he’s got listed.”

“Oh. Fine.”

She opened the door wide and turned on all the lights and urged me in. She was a thirtyish blonde in an imitation mink coat which had seen better days. So had she. One of those blondes who ripened early like California fruit, hung in full teen-age maturity for a few sweet months or years, then fall into the first high reaching hand. The memory of the sweet days stayed in them and fermented.

Closing the door she brushed against my back in a movement which was either erotic or alcoholic. The odor of gin which she wore instead of perfume suggested the latter possibility. But she opened up her minkless mink and gave me a dazzling smile across her figure. Touch me if you dare, the smile said: I dare you, but don’t you dare. They never got over their grudging need of the reaching hands that violated their first fine careless narcissism.

“I don’t really work for my husband any more, but I’m sure that I can help you with your needs, since he isn’t here at the moment. We have many fine properties listed.”

Coat and figure swinging in an interesting cross-rhythm, she pulled a straight chair out from a desk and offered it to me. I sat. A layer of dust powdered the formica desk-top. The daily calendar hadn’t been changed for the new year.

In front of the calendar was a little pile of three-by-five business blotters decorated with a photographic cut. The cut showed the clown-nosed man wearing a polka-dot bow tie and a carnivorous grin. It was captioned: “Ben Merriman the Realtor – firstest with the mostest. An honest deal every time.”

“Many fine,” his wife said. She sat down in a businesslike way which her unbusinesslike body parodied.

“How large a property are you interested in, Mr.–?”

I got out my wallet and produced a card which a Santa Monica life insurance salesman had presented to me before he found out what I did for a living. The name on the card was William C. Wheeling, Jr. I gave it to her.

“Wheeling,” I said. “I like a big house – something big and traditional-looking like that white Colonial I saw in Atherton today. It has your husband’s sign on it.”

“You must be thinking of the Mandeville house on Whiteoaks. Big stone wall around it?”

“That’s the one.”

“I’m sorry.” She was really sorry. “It’s sold. Too bad. You could have gotten a terrific buy. The owner knocked off thousands from the price.”

“Who was the owner?”

“A Mrs. Wycherly, a very fine woman, well-heeled. She told Ben she intends to travel.”

“Where to?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m sure.” She opened her eyes wide in dubious innocence: they were dull purple like Santa Clara plums. “If you’re thinking of trying to contact her and make an offer, it’s no use. I think it’s even out of escrow already. The new owners are moving down from Oakland Heights any day now. Wonderful people. Ben said they paid cash out. But we have many other splendid buys.”

“I’m interested in this one. The for-sale sign is still up.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. Ben should have taken it down long ago. If he’d keep his mind on the business–”

The front door opened, blowing cold air on the back of my neck. I thought it was Merriman and rose turning to meet him. It was a younger man in a turtle-neck cashmere sweater, robin’s-egg blue, the color of his eyes. His blonde good looks were spoiled by a small goatee which wagged on his chin like an unfinished piece of face.

“Where’s Ben?” he said to the woman. “I mean it, doll.”

“I don’t know where he is. He stood me up here two hours ago, said he had an appointment.”

“With Jessie?”

The woman’s hand went to her mouth. Through the fair skin on the back of it, I could see the branching veins climb like fine blue ivy. The tip of her middle finger slipped in between her teeth. She bit it hard, unwincing.

“Jessie?” she said around it. “What’s Jessie got to do with it?”

“He made a heavy pass at her today while I was at the store. I don’t like it.”

She took her ringer out of her mouth. “I’m crazy about it. Are you sure that Jessie isn’t making it up?”

“I know damn well she isn’t.”

He raised his fist and held silent communion with it. There were fresh marks on the knuckles, which looked like toothmarks. His blue eyes were mean. He brushed his goatee with his fist:

“It isn’t the first time he made a pass at her. I didn’t tell you before. I’m telling you now. If you can’t stop him, I will. With what I’ve got on him–”

“You lay off Ben,” she said.

“Then you make him lay off Jessie. What’s the matter? Aren’t you getting along?”

“Oh, sure,” she said with bitter irony. “Everything’s coming up dandelions. Go away now, will you? I’m with a customer.”

“Since when are you working nights for Ben?”

“I told you he left me waiting here. We were going to go out on the town for a change.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I don’t, now. I guess he decided he’d have more fun by himself.”

“Yeah. Well, he better keep his hands off my pig.”

“Tell her to stop wiggling her fat little rump at him.”

They grinned at each other like old enemies. He slammed out. She sat forgetful of me, her eyes focused on something between us, invisible in the air.

“The dirty son of a bitch,” she said between her teeth. “Two can play at that game.” Then she remembered me, and said in a more human voice: “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll be all right in a minute. Give me a minute, will you?”

It was the least I could give her. She went into the back room and closed the flimsy door. I heard the clink of a bottle on a glass, the distinct pouring sound which solitary drinkers imagine nobody can hear.

She came out wearing fresh lipstick on a muzzy gin smile. “I’ve been looking at the figures on the Mandeville house. If you’re really interested, we might be able to work something out with the new owners. They got such a terrific buy, they could sell to you at a profit and still give you a bargain. Even at sixty thousand it’s a steal. It was originally listed at eighty, and it would cost a hundred and twenty to replace at today’s building costs.”

I said with the necessary smile: “For a girl who doesn’t work here, you put out a good spiel.”

“Thank you, sir. I used to sell for Ben.” She leaned across the desk, offering me her full white décolleté as a sort of bonus. “Seriously, are you interested in the property?”

“Very interested. Why don’t you show it to me, then we’ll talk about the deal?”

“Tonight?”

“Why not?”

She looked past me at the moving traffic in the street. “I better not leave, he might come back. Miracles can happen. If you can’t wait till morning, I’ll give you the keys. The electricity is on in the house, I think.”

She went into the back room again and came out looking flustered. “Ben must have taken the keys. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. I’ll come back in the morning.”

Whiteoaks Avenue was less than a mile from Camino Real. I found the moulded iron gates standing open, the padlock gaping on its chain. I gathered up the rest of the scattered newspapers and looked at the date lines. The latest was November 17. The earliest was November 3, the day after Phoebe disappeared.

The bellying gray sky above the trees was expectant with moon. The house seemed to grow before me as I trudged up the driveway. Its facade returned the glare of my flashlight like a blank white sepulchre.

The ornate front door was closed but unlocked. I went in and found a light switch beside the door. The parquetry floor of the hallway was tracked with old mud and sprinkled with the cards of real-estate salesmen. From the rear of the hallway a white-banistered staircase curved gracefully upward into darkness.

I entered the main room to the right, and touched the switch. A yellowing crystal chandelier lit up incompletely. Most of the furnishings went with the chandelier: old striped English sofas facing each other from opposite ends of the room, a white marble fireplace containing a gas heater, over the mantel a bad painting of somebody’s father, portly in a Prince Albert.

Mrs. Wycherly, or some other modern, had added a few touches of her own. The brash new multicolored drapes clashed like cymbals with the rest of the room. A blonde mahogany hi-fi console stood beside the fireplace. It was open, and it had a record on it: “Slow Boat to China.” On the inside of the door a cork dart-board hung, surrounded by the scars which the darts had made in the white panelling.

I closed the door, pulled one of the darts out of the cork, walked back across the room to the fireplace, and threw the dart at the board, which it hit. I went through the other downstairs rooms humming “Slow Boat to China” to myself and thinking about a story I read in high school. It was called “The Vision of Mirza” and it had been cropping up in my memory for years.

Mirza had a vision of a bridge which a lot of people were crossing on foot: all the living people in the world. From time to time one of them would step on a kind of trap door and drop out of sight. The other pedestrians hardly noticed. Each of them went on walking across the bridge until he hit a trap door of his own, and fell through.

I hit mine, or something like it, at the top of the graceful stairs. It wasn’t a trap door, exactly, and it wasn’t exactly mine. It was a body, and it sighed when I stumbled over it. It sighed as if it had fallen the whole distance and lived.

I found the upturned face with my flashlight. It wasn’t worth finding: a mask of blood behind which no life bubbled. The spattered striped bow tie and the sharp charcoal suit looked hickish and pathetic on a man so beaten and dead.

His jacket pockets were empty. I had to move him to get at his back pockets. He was heavy, as hard to lift as a cross made out of flesh. I found four one-dollar bills in his wallet, and a driver’s license made out to Ben Merriman. His little gun was missing.

I put the wallet in the breast pocket of his jacket, so that I wouldn’t have to move him again. Then I took it out and wiped it with my handkerchief and put it back. The flashlight on the floor watched me like a yellow suspicious eye. I picked it up and got out of there.

On my way back to Merriman’s office I passed the Southern Pacific station. It was closed for the night, but there was a pay telephone on the outside platform. I used it to call the police.

Mrs. Merriman was still sitting at the desk in the front of the office. She looked up with her muzzy smile when I came in:

“I’m sorry, Ben didn’t come back yet. I’m holding the fort all by my lonesome. Join me?” Then she saw the look on my face, and imitated it: “What’s the matter?”

“I want Mrs. Wycherly’s address.”

“I don’t have it.”

“You must have, if you sold the house for her.”

“Ben handled it. I told you I don’t work for him, not on a regular basis. He does most of his business out of his hat.”

“Let me see the listing.”

“What for? You trying to work out a deal behind our backs or something?”

“Nothing like that. I want to know where Mrs. Wycherly is.”

“The listing won’t tell you. Look, I’ll show you.”

She rose unsteadily. I followed her into the little back room. A half-full bottle of Gordon’s gin stood on a pile of papers on the desk. She riffled through the papers and came up with a mimeographed sheet. She was trying to read it with slightly blurred eyes when the telephone rang.

She picked it up and said yes and listened to it. Her face turned pearly young. Her eyes expanded. She thanked the telephone and put it down.

“Ben is dead. Somebody killed him, and I thought he stood me up.”

She started out past me, walking like a woman in a trance. She collided heavily with the doorframe, leaned on the wallboard partition. The mimeographed sheet was crumpled in her hand. She dropped it and reached for the bottle.

I salvaged the piece of paper from the floor. The house on Whiteoaks Avenue had been listed at eighty thousand. The eighty thousand was crossed out and sixty thousand penciled in. There were other pencilings, faint and half-erased, which I couldn’t decipher. Mrs. Wycherly’s address was given as 507 Whiteoaks Avenue.

The woman set the bottle down three-eighths full. Leaning on the desk, she lowered herself into the swivel chair that stood beside it. She twisted her hair in her fingers. It was dark at the roots, as if darkness had seeped up in capillary action from her mind.

“The crazy old bastard,” she said. “I bet he did it to him. He came to our house last week and said he was going to do it. Unless Ben paid him off.”

“Who?”

“Mandeville. Captain Mandeville. He walked right up to our front door with a forty-five revolver in his hand. Ben had to slip out through the patio and let me handle him. The old guy is as nutty as a fruitcake.”

“What did Mandeville want?”

“What does everybody want? Money.” She looked at me levelly. The quick one-two of grief and gin had stunned her into sobriety. “He claimed that Ben cheated him out of the money for his lousy house.”

“Is that true?”

“How do I know? I lived five years with Ben, from pillar to post and back again. I never did find out what went on in his head, or where all the money went. I never even got a house of my own, and him in real estate. Call it real estate.”

“What do you call it?”

“I gave up calling it anything. He’d work harder to turn a crooked buck–” She glanced up at me again, her mouth still open. She had lipstick on her teeth. “Why are you so interested in Ben? You don’t even know him.”

“No, I wish I had.”

“What is this? What are you trying to pull on me?”

“Nothing on you, Mrs. Merriman. I’m sorry about what happened. By the way, who was the blond lad with the chin-beard?”

The fresh gin was rising in her eyes, disturbing their focus and dissolving their meaning. She used it as a kind of mask, letting her eyes go entirely dead:

“I dunno who you mean.”

“You know who I mean. He came in here looking for your husband.”

“Oh, him,” she said with bleary cunning. “I never saw him before in my life.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not. Anyway, who are you to call me a liar? You said you were a prospect. You’re no prospect.”

“I’m a prospector. Who was he, Mrs. Merriman?”

“I dunno. Some jerk Ben bums around with – used to, I mean.” The two tenses coming together cut her like scissors. Tears or gin exuded between her eyelids. “Go away and let me be. You were nice before. You’re not nice any more.” She added as if she was completing a syllogism: “I bet you’re just a lousy cop.”

“No.”

For once I wished I was. The cops, the lousy cops, would be arriving any time now. I was far from home base and suitable for framing. I said good night to her and went out through the front office. On the way I picked up a blotter with Merriman’s picture on it.

A sheriff’s car with a dying siren drifted out of the traffic stream and took my place at the curb as I pulled away. Young heads at the drive-in across the road became aware of it, wondering if it had come for them. Some dogs in the kennels next door had begun to howl.