Black Friday (10 page)

"Let her tell it," Charley said.

Myra didn't say anything.

Chaley looked at her. "I'm trying to help you, kid. I wanna do everything I can to help you."

She sat there looking at the carpet. She was like a lost child sitting in some station-house, no hope. in her eyes.

Charley put his hand on her shoulder. "I can't help you if you don't talk. You gotta talk. You gotta get it out."

"I can't," she said.

"Give it a try," Charley urged gently.

She sighed heavily. Then she tried to speak and she couldn't speak.

Charley said, "You got me plenty worried, kid."

"I know." Her head was down. "I'm sorry, Charley. I'm so sorry--"

"This walking-out business. I'm worried you'll try it again. And maybe next time you'll make it. So then they pick you up--"

"For what? I'm not on the wanted list."

"You think you're not. You forget all them times they hauled you in on suspicion. So all right, the way it was then you knew just what to say and how to say it. But now it's different, you got yourself all knotted up inside, you're in no shape to handle their questions. And before you know it you're breaking down and spilling everything."

"I wouldn't do that, Charley. I'd never do a thing like that to you."

"Not in your right mind you wouldn't. But the way it is now, you got no grip on yourself. You're a long way off from anywhere."

She gazed across the room at the packed suitcase.

For some moments it was quiet. Then Charley said very softly, "You see the way it is, kid? I can't take any chances. If you don't snap out of it, I'll hafta get rid of you."

"You mean--I'm gonna die?"

Charley took his hand off her shoulder. He didn't say anything.

"Yes," she said, "you're telling me I'm gonna die. And then you hafta do away with the body. So it goes where my brother went. It goes down the cellar and into the furnace."

And Hart thought: This is actually happening, look at Charley's face, look at him there getting up from the sofa and taking the gun out of his pocket. And look at her, Jesus Christ, look at her, she isn't even blinking.

"Well, kid?" Charley's voice was purely technical. "What's it gonna be?"

She smiled at Charley. "All I can say is, thanks for everything. You did a lot for me, Charley. You were awfully good to me and Paul."

Charley stood a few feet away from her. He had the gun aimed at her head. She went on smiling, sitting there not moving. Hart could feel the coldness of the room and now it had nothing to do with the weather outside. The coldness came from the ice in Charley's brain. Because Charley was completely a professional and therefore functioning according to the rigid doctrine of the outlaw code. So the only thing the gun was pointed at was an obstacle that had to be removed.

Hart heard himself saying, "Hold it, Charley."

"No," Charley said. "I tried to pull her out of it and I couldn't. So she's done. Can't you see she's done?"

"Not yet," Hart said. He got up from the chair. He did it slowly but with enough noise to delay the action of Charley's finger on the trigger.

"What's the matter?" Charley asked him, not looking at him. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing special," Hart said. "I'm just thinking there's another way to do it."

"How you mean?" Charley spoke to him as one professional to another. "You mean with a knife or something?"

"I meant there's another way to bring her around," Hart said.

Charley looked at him.

And Hart said, "Put the gun in her hand."

Charley winced slightly. Then he frowned.

Hart looked at Myrna. "Tell him you want the gun. Tell him you want to shoot me."

Myrna closed her eyes. She shivered.

"You get it?" Hart said to Charley. "She tries to walk out of this house to get away from me. This man here who killed Paul. She says to herself, if she stays here she'll find some way to murder me. She doesn't want to murder me. And yet she does. She's on a see-saw. Only way to get her off it is hand her the gun, let her make up her mind here and now."

Charley went on frowning at him. "Maybe you think this gun ain't loaded?"

"I know it's loaded."

"And you're really willing to take the chance?"

Hart nodded.

"You're quite a gambler," Charley said.

"Not a smart-one. Just curious. I'm very curious now."

Charley grinned stiffly. "What's that they say about the cat?"

"Yes, it got the cat, all right."

"Well," Charley said, and he wasn't grinning now, "there's one nice thing about this. It lets me out."

Hart saw the gun twirling on Charley's finger in the trigger guard, the barrel coming into Charley's grasp, the butt extended toward Myrna. She shivered again, then reached out and took the gun from Charley. She looked at it, got a trembling grip on it, and aimed it at Hart.

14

He stood there waiting for it to hit him. It would be a .38 slug going into him high in the chest or possibly the throat. Her eyes were focused on that area and he told himself the look on her face was entirely clinical, as though the only thought in her brain was to put the bullet where it would finish him. Then he tried to tell himself he was mistaken about that, maybe she wasn't seeing him at all, maybe she was seeing inside herself and trying to get things cleared up in there. Well, whichever way it was going, he wished she'd hurry up and settle it. He hadn't expected the waiting would be this difficult. But he wasn't sorry he'd told Charley to hand her the gun.

It isn't exactly suicide, he thought. It's more on the order of sacrifice. Some of us are sacrifice-prone instead of accident-prone, we see something and it grows on us, we come to adore it, and all at once we hear the mandolins and get the picture of that moonlight pouring through the trees. It has no connection with logic or anything you can put your finger on, it's just got to be classified as mystical. You're making this sacrifice for purely mystical reasons. If she wants you dead you're willing to be dead. And another thing you know, this waiting is difficult only because you feel the pain she's having, like a current going through a wire from her to you. Look at her eyes, oh Jesus Christ look what's in her eyes.

She lowered the gun.

"No deal?" Charley murmured.

She didn't answer. The gun rested in her lap. Charley reached out and took it. For a few moments he stood close to her, studying her face. Then he put the gun in his bathrobe pocket and looked at Hart and said, "I think she's all right now."

"Of course she's all right."

She was smiling at Hart. It was a dim smile. She said, "You know what I'm thinking?"

"Yes," Hart said. "I know."

"She's thanking you," Charley said. "She feels a lot better now and she's saying thanks."

Without sound Hart said to Charley: You don't know the half of it, not even a small part of it.

"She's gonna like you now7 Charley said. "You and her are gonna be friends. Ain't that right, Myrna?"

She nodded slowly, but it wasn't a reply to Charley's query. It was in agreement with something she was saying to herself.

Charley said, "Well, I guess what we oughta do now is get some sleep."

"I'm not sleepy," Hart said.

"Me neither," Myrna murmured. "I'd like to sit here for a while and talk."

"To him?" Charley asked.

"Yes," she said. "That is, if it's all right with you, Charley."

"I think it's a swell idea," Charley smiled. "You and him'll have a nice talk and get to be good friends."

"Would you do me a favor, Charley?"

"Sure, Myrna. Anything."

"Would you carry my suitcase upstairs?"

"It'll be a pleasure," Charley said. He turned and went to the stairway and picked up the suitcase. He started up the stairs, then stopped and looked at Hart. "You better put something on. There's no heat in this house, I don't want you catching cold."

"I'm all right," Hart said.

"I want you to stay in shape. You're a valuable piece of property."

"Mattone doesn't think so."

"Mattone don't think, period." Charley smiled. "Don't you worry about Mattone. Don't you worry about anything now. You're doing fine in this league."

"Thanks, Charley. But you didn't need to say it. I wasn't worrying."

"Not much you weren't," Charley chuckled. "You were jam-pack with worry." He patted his hand against the gun in his pocket. "This tool here had you scared sick. But you covered it up. I sure like the way you covered it up."

And Hart thought, So maybe Frieda was wrong, after all. This man is only a human being and he can be fooled. Aloud he said, "Tell Frieda I'll be up soon."

"All right," Charley said. "But don't keep her waiting too long."

"I won't."

Charley smiled complacently at both of them. Then he continued up the stairs and they heard his footsteps on the second floor, the bedroom door opening and closing. Hart listened for more sounds from upstairs but there were none and he could feel the quiet cold and dead up there and sweet-cool down here, really a fine climate down here in the living room so very far away from upstairs.

He went to the sofa and sat beside her, not touching her but feeling something so much deeper than touching. He looked at her, his eyes telling her, and he said, "You see how it is?"

"Yes," she said. "But how did it happen?"

"It just happened."

"I could feel it happening. I knew and you knew, we both knew."

"It's sorta funny," he said.

"But not to laugh about."

"Certainly not. It isn't that kind of comedy."

"What you mean is, it's funny the way it happened, but now that it's happened it's serious."

"That's exactly what I mean," he said. "It's very serious."

"What are we gonna do?"

"I don't know. You got any ideas?"

She shook her head.

"Well," he murmured, "let's try to think."

"I can't," she said. "I can't get any thoughts now."

"Neither can I. And that's the hell of it."

"Tell me something," she said. "Has this ever happened to you before?"

"No."

"Same here," she said.

"It's like--"

"Like--"

"We just can't say what it's like," he told her. "There's no way to say it."

"Maybe it's like when you're walking along and all at once you get hit by lightning."

"No," he said. "That would be negative. There's nothing negative about this."

"You mean this is nice?"

"It's so nice it's painful." And he smiled at her. "Don't you feel the pain?"

"Yes," she said. "It's a terrible pain. But it's wonderful."

"Where's it got you?"

"All over. Every part of me."

"It's the real thing, all right. No two ways about that. It was bound to happen, it just had to happen. And now it's a permanent state of affairs. We got something here that we'll never lose, not even when we die."

"Don't talk about dying."

"It can be talked about. It isn't important now. It's just a thing that happens to the skin and bones. And what's happened to you and me is way beyond that."

"Yes," she said. "That's right. But please, let's not talk about dying."

"All right," he said. "We'll switch to something else. Let's talk about music. You like the sound of mandolins?"

"If you do."

"So that takes care of that. And from there we go to the moonlight. You like to see the moonlight pouring through the trees?"

"Yes, I like that very much. I'm seeing it now."

"Sure, we're both seeing it. We're getting awfully artistic, aren't we? Let's see what happens if we try another direction. Some topic that has to do withscjence, like airplanes."

"We're flying now."

"Yes, we sure are."

"We're way up, way way up."

"You hear the motor?"

"No," she said. "Just the mandolins."

Then it was quiet but he heard the mandolins and he looked at her and phrases from sonnets floated through his mind. What he actually saw was a small skinny girl with a face that was fairly pleasant but not especially pretty, although the grey-violet eyes were something unique, and the black hair had a soft lustre that they try to get on canvas and sometimes almost get it but not quite.