The Second Pulp Crime Page 13

  “How are you, Hand?” Lawler said. “It was kind of you to come.”

  “Your messenger was persuasive,” I said. “I couldn’t resist him.”

  “Darcy, you mean. I can always depend on Darcy to do a job like a gentleman. He dislikes violence almost as much as I do. I’m sure you didn’t find him abusive.”

  “Not at all. I’ve never been threatened half so courteously before.” I turned my head and looked down at Robin Robbins. “Apparently you weren’t so lucky, honey. You must have run into an interior gorilla somewhere.”

  “I fell over my lip,” she said.

  Lawler laughed, and I could have sworn that there was a note of tenderness in it. “Robin’s impetuous. She’s always doing something she later regrets, and I’m always prepared to forgive her eventually, although I sometimes lose my temper in the meanwhile. Isn’t that so, Robin?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “We love each other in spite of everything.”

  “I won’t deny that Robin’s been punished,” Lawler said, “but I’m afraid I must charge you with being partially responsible, Hand. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of her innocence.”

  “I am,” I said, “I truly am.”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t think we need to be too critical. Robin, I realize, is even harder to resist than Darcy. For different reasons, of course. She’s told me what the two of you talked about yesterday after leaving here together, and she understands now how foolish she was. Don’t you, Robin?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I was foolish.”

  “She wants me to ask you to forget all about it, don’t you, Robin?”

  Sure,” she said. “Forget it.”

  “You see?” Lawler shrugged and shifted his weight against the piano. “Robin and I are really very compatible. We are never able to keep secrets from one another for very long.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said. “I’m touched.”

  He was looking directly at Robin for the first time now. “Wouldn’t you like to apologize to Mr. Hand for causing him so much trouble, Robin?”

  “I apologize, Mr. Hand, from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

  “I liked it better when you told me to go to hell,” I said.

  Lawler stood erect and stopped looking at Robin in order to look at me. “That wasn’t a very gracious response, Hand. However, let it pass. I also want to apologize to you.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m afraid I was a little unreasonable yesterday. I understand now that you were hired to investigate the matter we discussed, and you’re naturally concerned about your fee. I have no right to ask you to sacrifice that, of course. What do you think it will amount to?”

  “That depends on how long the job lasts. I get twenty-five dollars a day and expenses.”

  “Very reasonable. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars to drop the case. That should be adequate.”

  “Bribery?”

  “Don’t be offensive. Compensation for the loss of your fee.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Really? I figure that it comes to two-hundred days’ work. What do you think would be fair?”

  “Make it a million, and I’ll take it.”

  “Your joke isn’t very funny, Hand. It’s bad taste to joke about a serious matter.”

  “I’m not joking. You see, I’ve got to be compensated for more than the loss of a fee. I’ve got to be compensated for the loss of my integrity, such as it is. I don’t figure a million’s too much for that.”

  “Nonsense. You’re wasting your time, anyhow. I assured you of that. Is it ethical to go on accepting a fee under false pretenses?”

  “I explained to my client that it might not come to anything. Probably wouldn’t, as a matter of fact. We’re both satisfied.”

  “Perhaps I could persuade your client that he is making a mistake. Would you care to give me his name?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. The truth is, I don’t particularly care for your methods of persuasion.”

  “No matter. If I really want to learn the identity of your client, I can do it easily enough. Now, however, I don’t propose to discuss this matter with you any longer. I believe I’ve made you a fair proposition. Do you still refuse to accept it?”

  “Sorry. I’m holding out for the million.”

  If there was the slightest sign between him and Darcy behind me, the lifting of a brow or the twitch of a tick, I never saw it. It could be, I guess, that they’d developed a kind of extra-sensory communication that functioned automatically when the time was precisely right. Anyhow, sign or not, Darcy grabbed me abruptly above the elbows from behind and wrenched my arms and shoulders back so violently that I thought for a moment I’d split down the middle like a spring fryer. At the same instant, Lawler made a fist and stepped forward within range.

  “I regret this, Hand,” he said. “I really do.”

  “I know,” I said. “You dislike violence. You and Darcy both.”

  “It’s your own fault, of course. You’re behaving like a recalcitrant boy, and it’s necessary to teach you a lesson.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to teach me somewhere else? You wouldn’t want to get blood on this expensive carpet.”

  “It’s acrilan. Haven’t you heard of it? One of these new miracle fabrics. Blood wipes right off.”

  “Is that a fact? Better living through chemistry. I’m impressed.” He was tired now of the whole business. I could see in his face that he was tired, and I believe that he actually did regret what he considered the necessity of having to do what he was going to do. It was only that he knew no other way to fight, in spite of Chopin and Mozart and the veneer of respectability, than the way of violence. He wanted to get it over with, and he did. He drove the fist into my face, and it was like getting hit with a jagged boulder. Flesh split on bone, and bone cracked, and darkness welled up internally.

  I sagged, I guess, and hung by my arms from the hands of Darcy, and after a while, I guess, I straightened and lifted my head and was hit again in the face. When I opened my eyes after that, I was lying on the carpet, and there was blood on it. In my mouth there was more blood, and a thin and bitter fluid risen from my stomach. I was sick and in pain, but mostly I was ashamed. I got up slowly, in sections, and looked at Lawler through a pink mist.

  “Your carnet’s a mess,” I said. “I hope you’re right about acrilan.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re a tough guy, Hand, and I like you. If you think I get any kicks out of pushing you around, you’re wrong. There’s a lavatory in there. Through that door. Why don’t you go in and wash your face?”

  “I think I will,” I said.

  I went in and turned on the cold tap and caught double handfuls of water and buried my face in them. The water burned like acid, but it revived me and dispelled the pink fog. In the mirror above the lavatory, I saw that a cut on my cheekbone needed a stitch or two. I found some adhesive tape in the medicine cabinet and pulled the cut together and went back out into the other room.

  Lawler was seated at the grand again. Darcy was leaning against the wall behind him. Robin Robbins, in her chair, was still wearing her poker face. I thought I saw in her eyes a guarded gleam of something appealing. Compassion? Camaraderie based on mutual beatings? A raincheck? Who could be sure with Robin? I kept right on walking toward the door, and I was almost there when Lawler spoke to me.

  “Hand,” he said.

  I stopped but didn’t turn. I didn’t answer either. It hurt to talk, and I saw no sense in it.

  “One thing more,” he said. “I made a reasonable offer, and you’d be wise to accept it. This is just a suggestion of what you’ll get if you don’t. I’ll put a check for five thousand in the mail today. You’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said. />
  I started again and kept going and got on out of there.

  CHAPTER 7.

  In a sidewalk telephone booth I dialed Faith Salem’s number and got Maria.

  “Miss Salem’s apartment,” she said.

  “This is Percy Hand,” I said. “Let me speak with Miss Salem.”

  “One moment, please,” she said.

  I waited a while. The open wire hummed in my ear. My head felt three times its normal size, and the hum was like a siren. I held the receiver a few inches away until Faith Salem’s voice came on.

  “Hello, Mr. Hand,” she said.

  “You said to call before I came.”

  I said. “I’m calling.”

  “Is it something urgent?”

  “I don’t know how urgent it is. I know I just turned down five grand in a chunk for twenty-five dollars and expenses a day. Under the circumstances, I feel like being humored.”

  She was silent for ten seconds. The siren shattered my monstrous head.

  “You sound angry,” she said finally.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m an amiable boob who will take almost anything for anybody, and my heart holds nothing but love and tenderness for all of God’s creatures.”

  Silence again. The siren again. Her voice again in due time.

  “You’d better come up,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” I said.

  When I got there, the sun was off the terrace, and so was she. She was waiting for me in the living room, and she was wearing a black silk jersey pullover blouse and black ballerina-type slippers and cream-colored Capri pants. On her they looked very good, or she looked very good in them, whichever way you saw it. She was lying on her side, propped up on one elbow on a sofa about nine feet long, and she got up and came to meet me between the sofa and the door. I thought I heard her breath catch and hold for a second in her throat.

  “Your face,” she said.

  “It must be a mess,” I said.

  “There’s a stain on the front of your shirt,” she said.

  “Blood,” I said. “Mine.”

  She reached up and touched gently with her finger tips the piece of adhesive that was holding together the lips of the cut that needed a stitch or two. The fingers moved slowly down over swollen flesh and seemed to draw away the pain by a kind of delicate anesthetization. It was much better than codeine or a handful of aspirin. “Come and sit down,” she said. I did, and she did. We sat together on the nine foot sofa, and my right knee touched her left knee, and this might have been by accident or design, but in either event it was a pleasant situation that no one made any move to alter, certainly not I.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “So am I,” I said. “I’m sorrier than anyone.”

  “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  “It’s hardly worth while. I took a job, and this turned out to be part of it.”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why should anyone do this to you?”

  “Someone wanted me to give up the job, and I didn’t want to. We had a difference of opinion.”

  “Does that mean you’ve decided to go ahead with it?”

  “That’s what it means. At least for a while longer. When anyone wants so hard for me to quit doing something I’m doing, it makes me stubborn. I’m a contrary fellow by nature.”

  “You must be careful,” she said.

  She sounded as if it would really made a difference if I wasn’t. She was sitting facing me, her left leg resting along the edge of the sofa and her right leg not touching the sofa at all, and she lifted her hand again and touched the battered side of my face as if she were reminding herself and me of the consequences of carelessness, and it seemed a natural completion of the gesture for her hand to slip on around my neck. Her arm followed, and her body came over against mine, and I was suddenly holding her and kissing her with bruised lips, and we got out of balance and toppled over gently and lay for maybe a minute in each other’s arms with our mouths together. Then she drew and released a deep breath that quivered her toes. She sat up, stood up, looked down at me with a kind of incredulity in her eyes.

  “I think I need a drink,” she said. “You too.”

  “No gin and tonic, thanks,” I said. “Straight bourbon.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  She walked over to a cabinet to get it. I watched her go and watched her come. Her legs in the tight Capri pants were long and lovely and worth watching. This was something she knew as well as I, and we were both happy about it. She handed me my bourbon in a little frosted glass with the ounces marked on the outside in the frost, and the bourbon came up to the third mark. I drank it down a mark, leaving two to go, and she sat down beside me and drank a little less of hers.

  “I liked kissing you, and I’m glad I did,” she said, “but I won’t do it again.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Are you offended?”

  “No.”

  “There’s nothing personal in it, you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “There are obvious reasons why I can’t afford to.”

  “I know the reasons. What I’d like to do now, if you don’t mind, is to quit talking about it I came here to talk about something else, and it would probably be a good idea if we got started.”

  “What did you come to talk about?”

  “About you and Constance Markley. When I was here before, you said you knew her in college. You said you shared an apartment that she paid the rent on. I neglected to ask you what college it was.”

  “Amity College.”

  “That’s at Amity, of course.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “What was your name then?”

  “The same as now. Faith Salem.”

  “You told me you’d been married a couple of times. I’ve been wondering about the Miss. Did you get your maiden name restored both times?”

  “Not legally. When I’m compelled to be legal, I use another name. Would you believe that I’m a countess?”

  “I’d believe it if you said it.”

  “Well, I don’t say it often, because I’m not particularly proud of it. The count was attractive and quite entertaining for a while, but he turned out to be a mistake. I was in Europe with my first husband when I met him. You remember the publisher’s son I married in college? That one. We were in Europe, and he’d turned out to be rather a mistake too, although not so bad a one as the count turned out later. Anyhow, I met the count and did things with him while my husband was doing things with someone else, and he was a very charming and convincing liar, and I decided it would probably be a smart move to make a change. It wasn’t.”

  “Wasn’t it profitable?”

  “No. The amount of his income was one of the things the count lied about most convincingly. Are you being rather nasty about it, incidentally? I hope not. Being nasty doesn’t suit you somehow.”

  “Excuse me. You’ll have to remember that I’ve had a hard day. The publisher’s son and the count are none of my business. At your request, Constance Markley is. I’d like to know exactly the nature of the relationship that caused you to share an apartment at college.”

  “It was normal, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t.” I lowered the bourbon to the first mark. My mouth was cut on the inside, and the bourbon burned in the cut. “I don’t know just what I do mean. I don’t even know exactly why I asked the question or what I’m trying to learn. Just tell me what you can about Constance.”

  She was silent, considering. Her consideration lasted about half a minute, and after it was finished, she took time before speaking to lower the level of her own bourbon, which required abou
t half as long.

  “It’s rather embarrassing,” she said.

  “Come on,” I said. “Embarrass yourself.”

  “Oh, well.” She shrugged. “I liked Constance. I told you I did. But I wasn’t utterly devoted to her. She was rather an uncomfortable girl to be around, to tell the truth. Very intense. Inclined to be possessive and jealous. She often resented the attention and time I gave to other people. At such times, she would be very difficult and demanding, then withdrawn and sullen, and finally almost pathetically repentant and eager to make everything right again. It was a kind of cycle that she repeated many times. Her expressions and gestures of affection made me feel uncomfortable. Not that there was the least sign of perversion in them, you understand. It was only that they were so exorbitant.”

  “Would you say that she admired you?”

  “I guess so. I guess that’s what it was.”

  “Well, I understand it isn’t so unusual to find that kind of thing among school girls. Boys either, for that matter. Do you have anything left over from that time? Any snapshots or letters or anything like that?”

  “It happens that I do. After you left the other day, I got to thinking about Constance, the time we were together, and I looked in an old case of odds and ends I’d picked up different times and places, the kind of stuff you accumulate and keep without any good reason, and there were this snapshot and a card among all the other things. They don’t amount to much. Just a snapshot of the two of us together, a card she sent me during the Christmas holiday of that year. Would you like to see them?”

  I said I would, and she went to get them. Why I wanted to see them was something I didn’t know precisely. Why I was interested at all in this period of ancient history was something else I didn’t know. It had some basis, I think, in the feeling that the thing that could make a person leave an established life without a trace was surely something that had existed and had been growing for a long time, not something that had started yesterday or last week or even last year. Then there was, of course, the coincidence. Silas Lawler wanted this sleeping dog left lying, and once a month he went to the town where Constance Markley had once lived with Faith Salem, who wanted the dog wakened. It was that thin, that near to nothing, but it was all there was of anything at all.