Vanish in an Instant

7

The light of morning coming in through the barred window was dingy, and along the corridor a cool damp wind blew, erratically, first one way and then the other.

Miss Jennings wore a heavy cardigan over her brown dress, and instead of piling her hair high on top of her head as usual, this morning she had let it hang to keep the draft off her neck. As Miss Jennings was in the habit of pointing out, to anyone who was interested and a great many who weren’t, weather never bothered her, she rose above it. The clicking of her heels against the floor was overpoweringly cheerful, and she was humming, off-beat and off-key, but with a good deal of spirit.

Virginia pretended not to hear either the footsteps or the humming. She ignored Miss Jennings right up to the last moment; and then it was no longer possible to ignore her because Miss Jennings took her key-ring and slid it playfully and noisily across the bars of the cell like a child running a stick along an iron fence.

“Hi!” Miss Jennings always addressed her charges in a good loud voice, as if out of a conviction that imprisonment, like age, impaired the hearing. “Well, you’re all prettied up already. That’s good, because someone wants to see you right away.”

“If it’s that greasy little psychiatrist again tell him to go peddle his dreams.”

“Now, really. Now, is that any way to talk about nice Dr. Maguire? Besides it’s not him — he. It’s Mr. Meecham. He has a big surprise for you.”

“I wonder.”

“He has, too. Guess what it is.”

“I don’t like guessing games.”

“Oh, don’t be a little old spoilsport. Go on, guess.”

“I’m going home,” Virginia said.

“Yes! How about that now, aren’t you happy? Aren’t you surprised?”

“My mother sent me a message last night. So did Meecham.”

“Oh. Well, they couldn’t have known for sure, though. The lab reports weren’t in, the blood, and so forth.”

“What blood?”

“Why, he had blood all over his clothes, same as you had. They say he’s a nice young man, no record or anything. What amazes me is the amount of blood in a person, it’s simply amazing.”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Well, all right,” Miss Jennings smiled, rising above the blood as she rose above the weather.

She unlocked the cell door and Virginia stepped out into the corridor. She was pale, and the skin around her eyes looked blue, as if bruised by pressing thumbs.

“My, my,” Miss Jennings said. “You don’t look one bit happy. ‘Fess up now, you’re sorry to be leaving us.”

“Oh, sure.”

“You’ve been treated well, haven’t you?”

“Great. Just great. I’ll recommend the place to all my friends.”

Miss Jennings was still wearing her smile but it sagged in places like a worn-out dress. “You’re a sarcastic little snip, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“You think you’re so goddam smart all the time. All the time making smart talk. Oh, I heard your remarks about me to Mr. Meecham yesterday.”

“I knew you were too good to be true, Jennings.”

There was a thin line of white around the edges of Miss Jennings’ mouth. “I know you and your type. Jeering all the time, jeering at decent hardworking respectable people. I hate you. You hear that? I just hate you!”

“Oh, can it,” Virginia said. “Who cares?”

“And I’m sorry you’re leaving. I hope you’ll be back, next time for keeps.” She unlocked the door into the main corridor and the keys on the big key-ring clanked viciously. “You can go from here by yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“The girls that come in here and go out again, I always try to give them a nice send-off. But you, I wouldn’t even say good-bye to you. I think you’re a cold, bad, nasty woman and to hell with you.”

She shut the door between them with a decisive bang. All the way down the corridor Virginia could hear the clanking of metal against metal. It sounded as though Miss Jennings was slamming her keys against a wall in time to some rhythm of rage in her heart.

I’m not, Virginia thought, I’m not a cold nasty woman.

The door of the Sheriff’s office was open, and Meecham was waiting for her inside, with a brief case under his arm. Cordwink was there too, hunched over a desk that was strewn with papers. On a bench along the wall sat a white-faced young man in a gray prison uniform. The young man was staring at Virginia with a curious kind of intensity. She had an uneasy feeling that there was some silent communication in that glance, that he was trying to say something to her, or ask her something.

No introductions were made, no greetings exchanged. Not a word was spoken until Cordwink said, in his low heavy voice, “Do you recognize this man, Mrs. Barkeley?”

“Not by name. I think I’ve seen him before, though.”

“Where?”

“I don’t remember. Anywhere — on the street or at Paul’s office or in a bar. I get around quite a few places.”

“It was in a bar,” Loftus said, very quickly. “Sam’s — Saturday night, you talked to me...”

“Keep out of this, Loftus.”

Cordwink slapped the desk to emphasize the order. Loftus blinked nervously, but he went right on talking: “I’m only trying to help, Mr. Cordwink. What difference does it make if she remembers me? I’ve admitted fifty times that I killed Margolis. All these questions and interviews and tests — they aren’t going to change anything.” He turned to Virginia. “I asked Mr. Meecham to tell you but now I can tell you myself. I’m sorry about your having to stay in jail for a couple of days like this.”

“That’s... all right.” Under the glaring ceiling lights her face was as white as Loftus’, and the half-circles under her eyes made her look old and tired and hard. She whirled suddenly and faced Meecham. “I... couldn’t we get out of here? I want to get out of here.”

“All right,” Meecham said. “That suit you, Cordwink?”

“It has to.” Cordwink stood up. “The papers are all signed, nothing’s stopping you, the door’s open, go on.”

“What about your suitcase, Virginia?”

“To hell with the suitcase,” Virginia said harshly. “I just want to get out of here.”

Her departure was as wordless as her entrance. No one said good-bye, see you again, glad to have met you. Virginia walked out of the door and down the corridor so rapidly that Meecham had to hurry to catch up with her. Even when she reached the main door she didn’t stop to put on her coat. She just held it around her shoulders as she went out, and the arms of the coat flopped back and forth in the rising wind, making silly boneless little gestures.

The sidewalk was dirty with slush and on the road the cars swished by with splatters of mud. Even the wind was dirty. Somewhere, in the north of Canada, it had started out fresh, but it had picked up dirt on its journey, smoke and dust and particles of soot.

They stood in silence, side by side, at the intersection until the light turned green. Then they crossed the road to the parking lot where Meecham had left his car.

The car was locked. With only a slight hesitation Meecham unlocked his own door first and got in the car. Then he leaned across the seat and unlocked the other door for Virginia. The little amenities of politeness seemed as inappropriate and futile here as they had in the Sheriff’s office.

Meecham laid his brief case on the seat between them and started the car and switched on the heater. A cold blast of air gushed noisily from the heater.

Virginia reached over and turned the heater off again. “It makes too much noise.”

“All right.”

“Well, I did what you told me to. Didn’t I?”

“More or less.”

“I said that he looked familiar, that I’d seen him before. Isn’t that what you meant in the note you sent me last night?”

Meecham nodded.

“It’s not true though. I’ve never seen him before, not in Sam’s or any other bar or any other place.”

“You had quite a few memory lapses on Saturday night.”

“I remember talking to someone at Sam’s but it wasn’t this man. I’d have remembered him because he looks like Willett before Willett began to get fat.”

“Willett?”

“My older brother. When you meet someone who looks like your own brother, you don’t forget him, do you?”

“I haven’t got a brother.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t be so damned annoying, Meecham.”

“Me, annoying.” He turned left at the next intersection. The driver of the car behind him began to sound his horn furiously.

“You didn’t make a signal,” Virginia said. “If conversation interferes with your driving...”

“Your conversation interferes with my thinking,” Meecham said acidly. “You forget some things, you remember some things. The things you’re supposed to remember you forget, and the things you’re supposed to forget you remember.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Look, you just got out of jail ten minutes ago. Do you want to talk yourself right back in?”

“I thought you were my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell everything to your lawyer?”

“Theoretically, yes. But let’s get one point straight. What you told me just now — and very positively — was that you never saw Loftus before in your life. You may believe that, but I don’t. The evidence is against it. The fact that you’d been drinking heavily all evening makes your memory unreliable anyway. Then there’s Loftus’ own statement, and his report of some of your remarks to him. Loftus claims that you said among other things, God, this place stinks. One of the bartenders at Sam’s overheard it, and identified you as the woman who said it. He has a half-interest in the place, and I think you hurt his feelings. Well, are you still sure you never saw Loftus in your life until this morning?”

“I’m positive.”

“I know one definition of positive — being wrong at the top of your voice.”

“All right, I may be wrong.” She sounded depressed, listless. “It doesn’t matter much anyway, does it? When is Claude going to be buried?”

“This afternoon.” It was the first time he had heard her use Margolis’ first name or indicate in any way that she had been interested in him.

“I wouldn’t go to his funeral even if I could. I hate dead people.” She huddled, shivering, inside the big plaid coat. “I remember once when I was at school, the mother of one of my friends died, and I went home with the girl to cheer her up. Her mother was at the undertaker’s, they hadn’t quite finished — fixing her up. The girl combed her mother’s hair and fixed her glasses. The damned glasses kept slipping down that dead face, the girl kept putting them in place again. It was ghastly; I almost screamed. Do you have a cigarette?”

“Here.”

“Thanks. Shall I light one for you, too?”

“All right.”

She lit two cigarettes and gave him one. “Tell me, Meecham, are you on the level?”

“Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer. Sure, I am.”

“I don’t think it’s so stupid. You must get lots of opportunities and meet lots of funny people.”

“I do, indeed,” Meecham said dryly.

“Speaking of mothers, how much is my mother paying you?”

“For what?”

“She is paying you?”

“She offered to. I haven’t sent her a bill.”

“How much are you going to bill her for?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, think now. How much?”

“What is this anyway?” Meecham said, turning his head briefly to look at her. “What’s up?”

“She owns quite a bit of real estate back home. Two apartment houses in Pasadena and one in Westwood, and so on.”

“Why tell me?”

“So that you’d know she could afford to pay — oh, quite a lot.”

“I’m supposed to bill her for quite a lot, eh?”

“She can afford it, I tell you.”

“Then when Christmas comes around in a couple of weeks I send you a nice little present, is that it?”

“Sort of.”

“It sounds nasty,” Meecham said. “And you sound nasty.”

“It sounds worse than it is. I like my mother. I’m not trying to chisel her on anything. I can get money from her any time, only I hate to ask her. She always has to know why and what for. This way it would be the same money actually, only I wouldn’t have to answer any questions.”

“It still sounds nasty. What do you want the money for?”

“Questions, questions. Nobody trusts me.”

“What do you want the money for?”

“To run away,” she said earnestly.

“Where to?”

“It wouldn’t be running away if I told you where. Besides, I haven’t decided, and it doesn’t matter where as long as it’s far away and the climate’s good.”

He glanced at her again. Her listlessness had gone, and she looked very sincere and hopeful about her new project of running away. But it was a childish hopefulness, without a plan behind it or a foundation under it. “Away” would be pleasant simply because it wasn’t “here.”

“It will be good for me, good for my morale, to get away,” Virginia said. “Carney thinks I’m bad, and Paul thinks I’m a fool. They’re both very good people, virtuous people. But it’s hard to live with anyone who sets up standards you can’t ever reach.” She paused to draw on her cigarette. “And now this. This business about Claude. I’ll never live it down. No one will ever believe that I wasn’t one of Claude’s women. You don’t believe it, Meecham. Do you?”

“I could.”

“I wasn’t, anyway. I went out with him a few times because he was a wonderful dancer.”

It wasn’t very convincing, in view of the evidence of the quarrel the two of them had had on Saturday night. But Meecham didn’t say anything.

They had come to a railroad crossing just as the signal turned red and the crossing barriers were being lowered into place. A freight train began to move very slowly down the track, heading west. Virginia strained forward in her seat and watched it intensely, watched each car roll ponderously past as if she was wishing she was on one of them, heading west to some place where the climate was good.

He felt sorry for her. The feeling disturbed him, so he turned his attention to the printing on the sides of the freight cars. Michigan Central. Rock Island. Burlington. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Union Pacific. Grand Rapids. C.P.R. Do Not Hump. And, in chalk, on the bulging belly of a tank car, Kilroy Was Here, followed by a spirited reply, Who Wasn’t, Joe and Howie.

A hundred cars — oil and lumber, automobiles and scrap metal and fertilizer, explosives and people — a vast jumble of everything, and always room for one more, Virginia.

The caboose slid past, the barriers rose and Virginia sat back in the seat, her eyes shining, her breathing accelerated. The train had excited her — its possibilities, its destination, its very movement. Impulsively, she raised her hand and waved at the caboose as it disappeared down the track.