One Lonely Night (28 page)

I leaned on the handrail, looking out over the river. “It was the same kind of night: it was cold and wet and all alone. A girl came running up that ramp with a guy behind her who had a gun in his pocket. I shot the guy and the girl jumped over the railing. That’s how simple it was. The only things they left behind were two green cards that identified them as members of the Communist Party.

“So I was interested. I was interested in anything that toted around a green card. That’s how I got interested in Oscar. The guy he killed had a green card too. Hell, you know the rest of the story. There’s a few things only I know and that’s the main thing. I know how many people died tonight. I know what the papers will look like tomorrow and the month after. You know what, Lee, I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs in the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw and here I am calmer than I’ve ever been and happy too. They were Commies, Lee. They were red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago, and part of the gang who are going to be dying in the very near future unless they get smart and take the gas pipe. Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing.

“God, but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out. They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid.”

It was too much for Lee. He held onto the rail and looked sick.

I said, “What’s the matter, Oscar?”

His eyes were glazed and he coughed. “You mean... Lee.”

“No I don’t. I mean Oscar. Lee’s dead.”

It was all there, the night, the cold and the fear. The unholy fear. He was looking at my face and he had the same look of unholy fear as the girl had that other night so long ago.

I said it slow. I let him hear every word. “The girl that died here that night was Paula Riis. She was a nurse in an asylum for the insane. I had it wrong ... she didn’t help Oscar to escape ... she just quit and Oscar escaped later by himself. Paula came to New York and got tied up with a lot of crappy propaganda the Commies handed out and went overboard for it. She thought it was great. She worked like hell and wound up in a good spot.

“Then it happened. Somehow she saw the records or was introduced to the big boy in this country. She knew it was you. What happened, did she approach you thinking you were Oscar’s brother?
Whatever happened she recognized you as Oscar and all her illusions were shattered. She knew you were Oscar Deamer and demented as hell!

“That’s why you were a Commie, Oscar, because you were batty. It was the only philosophy that would appeal to your crazy mind. It justified everything you did and you saw a chance of getting back at the world. You escaped from that sanitarium, took Lee’s private papers and made yourself a name in the world while Lee was off in the woods where he never saw a paper of any kind and never knew what you did. You must have had an expert dummy the fingerprints on that medical record ... but then, you had access to that kind of expert, didn’t you?

“It was rough when Paula recognized you. She lost her ideals and managed to contact Lee. She told him to come East and expose you, but she did something else first. She had a boy friend in the party. His name was Charlie Moffit and she told him the story hoping to drag him out of the Commie net.

“Charlie was the stupid one. He saw a play of his own and made it. He saw how he could line you up for some ready cash and gave you the story over the phone. It was right after the Legion Parade, the 13th, that you had a heart attack according to your secretary ... not because your brother contacted you because his ticket was dated the 15th, a Friday, and he didn’t arrive until the day after.
You had a heart attack when Charlie Moffit called you!

“You contacted the torpedo that went under the MVD title and you worried about it, but there was no out until Lee arrived himself and gave you a buzz. That was the best touch of all! Then you saw how you could kill Charlie yourself, have the blame shifted to your brother with a reasonable story that would make it look good. You knew you had a way to kill two birds with one stone ... and get rid of a brother who could have stood in your way. There was only one thing you didn’t foresee. Charlie Moffit was a courier in the chain that passed along those documents. During one of his more lucid moments he recognized that they were important and held on to them for life insurance. He mailed them to his girl friend, Paula, to take care of.”

He was white. He hung on to the rail and shook. He was scared stiff.

“So you waited until Charlie called again and arranged to meet him. You had it all figured out beforehand and it looked good as gold. You got hold of an old actor and had him impersonate you while you went out and killed Charlie Moffit. The actor was good, too. He knew how to make speeches. You paid him off, but you didn’t know then that he liked to drink. He never did before because he had no money. Later you found that he had a loose tongue when he drank and he had to go too. But that was an easy kill and it’s getting ahead of the story.

“You killed Charlie, switched with the actor at the dinner meeting, and made yourself a wonderful alibi. It happened after the supper when you were going around speaking to the groups, a time when nobody would be conscious of the switch, especially since none of them knew you too well anyway.

“I don’t know what the play was at your brother’s place when Pat and I went after him, but I’ll try to set it up. See if I’m right. Mr. MVD went there first and got him running. He got him in the subway and shoved him under the train so his identity would be washed out.”

As casually as I could I took Velda’s envelope from my pocket and fingered out the sheet inside. He didn’t bother to look at it.

I said, “My secretary dug up this story. She went back to your home state and went through the records. She found out that you and your brother were twins, all right, but you weren’t identical twins.
You were fraternal twins and he didn’t look like you at all!

“But to get back to the beginning. You knew when Lee called you that there was more to it than you thought. You knew Charlie wasn’t smart enough to dig up the stuff by himself, so you and fat boy did some fast snooping and found out about Paula. During that time she saw you or the other guy and got scared. She wanted to talk and called the police, asking them to meet her on the bridge where they could be alone.

“Your MVD pal was a little shrewder. He tapped her phone line and moved in to intercept her, but she moved a little faster and got out of the house before he came around. She had just enough lead to make it to the top of the bridge right where we’re standing when he arrived. It was pretty—you should have been here. You should have seen what I did to him. The sour note was Paula. She thought I was one of them looking for a cut of the loot or something, because she couldn’t picture any decent person hauling out a rod just like that and blowing a guy’s face off. She went over the bridge.

“It would have been so nice for you if I hadn’t had a conscience and wanted to find out what the green card meant. You knew my reputation but never thought I could go that far. You hired me so you could keep tabs on me and now look what happened.

“Maybe nothing would have happened if those documents hadn’t turned up missing. Those people would have died just to keep your identity a secret. But one of those dead men was a critical link connected with the missing documents, so you cooked up the story of your brother’s having left something incriminating behind him, thinking that maybe I’d come across the documents and hand them over to you. Well, Oscar, I did. You had your boys try to run them down first, but they didn’t quite make it.

“I got to be a very dangerous guy in your little game. I was all over the picture with my nose picking up a lot of smells. You passed the orders to get me out of the way at any price and damn near succeeded. Too bad your new MVD boy didn’t get me instead of Ethel Brighton up in the cabin there. She was dangerous too. She finally got wise to how foolish she had been and talked to the right people. She was even going to turn me in, but your MVD boy stopped that.

“You know, I thought Ethel put the finger on me when she saw my identification in my wallet. But it wasn’t Ethel, it was you. You fingered me because I was getting in there. You thought that I had gone too far already and didn’t want to take any more chances. So out come the strong-arm boys and the MVD lad.

“He sure was a busy little beaver. He wanted to kill me in the worst way. When you guys discovered that I had those documents you must have gone nuts. Maybe it even occurred to you that in the process of getting them I would have uncovered all the angles to the thing. I did that, little man, I did just that.

“You got real gay at the end, though. You pulled a real smartie when you put the snatch on Velda. For that there was only one answer ... I wanted to see you die. I saw them die. You should have seen what I saw and you would have died yourself even before a bullet reached you.

“But none of that is bad when you compare it to the big thing. That’s you, Mr. Deamer. You, the little man whom the public loves and trusts ... you who are to lead the people into the ways of justice ... you who shouted against the diabolic policies of the Communists ... you are the biggest Communist of them all!

“You know the theory ... the ends justify the means. So you fought the Commie bastards and on the strength of that you hoped to be elected, and from there the Politburo took over. With you in where it counted you could appoint party members to key positions, right in there where they could wreck this country without a bit of trouble. Brother, that was a scheme. I bet the boys in the Kremlin are proud of you.”

“Tomorrow,” I said, “the boys in the Kremlin are going to be wondering what the hell happened. They’ll wonder where their boys are and they’ll put up a yell, but there will be fear behind that yell because when they learn what happened they’ll have to revise their whole opinion of what kind of people are over here. They’ll think it was a tough government that uncovered the thing secretly. They’ll think it was one of Uncle’s boys who chopped down that whole filthy mob, and they won’t complain too much because they can’t afford to admit those same boys who were here on diplomatic passes were actually spying. The Kremlin mob will really stand on their heads when they get my final touch. It’s a beauty, Mr. Deamer. Do you know what I’m going to do?”

He was staring at my face. His eyes couldn’t leave my eyes and his flesh was already dying with the fear inside him. He tried to talk and made only harsh breathing sounds. He raised his hands as if I were something evil and he had to keep me away. I was evil. I was evil for the good. I was evil and he knew it. I was worse than they were, so much worse that they couldn’t stand the comparison. I had one, good, efficient, enjoyable way of getting rid of cancerous Commies. I killed them.

I said, “The touch is this, Oscar. You, the greatest Commie louse of them all, will be responsible for the destruction of your own party. You’re going to die and the blame will go to the Kremlin. I’m going to stick a wallet and some shreds of cloth in your fist when you’re dead. In your other hand will be the remains of those documents, enough to show what they were. Enough to make the coppers think that somehow you alone, in a burst of patriotic effort, managed to get hold of those important papers and destroyed them. It’ll make them think that just as you were destroying them the killer came up and you fought it out. You came out second best, but in the struggle you managed to rip out the pocket that held his wallet and the cops will track it down thinking it came from your murderer, and what they find will be this ... they’ll find that it came from a guy who was an MVD man. He’ll be dead, but that won’t matter. If they manage to tie it in with the bodies in the paint shop they’ll think that the killer went back to report without the papers he was sent after and the party, in their usual manner of not tolerating inefficiency, started to liquidate him and they smeared each other in the process. No, the Kremlin won’t think that. They’ll think it was all a very clever plan, an ingenious jumble that will never be straightened out, which it is. You’re going to be a big hero. You saved the day and died in the saving. When the news is made public and the people know their favorite hero has been knocked off by the reds they’ll go on a hunt that won’t stop until the issue is decided, and brother, when the people in this country finally do get around to moving, they move fast!”

The irony of it brought a scream to his lips. He made a sudden mad lurch and tried to run, but the snow that came down so white and pure tripped him and I only had to reach out to get his throat in my hand.

I turned him around to face me, to let him look at what I was and see how I enjoyed his dying. The man who had thrown a lot of people on the long road to nowhere was a gibbering idiot slobbering at the mouth. I had his neck in my one hand and I leaned on the railing while I did it. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until my fingers were buried in the flesh of his throat and his hands clawed at my arm frantically, trying to tear me away.

I laughed a little bit. It was the only sound in the night. I laughed while his tongue swelled up and bulged out with his eyes and his face turned black. I held him until he was down on his knees and dead as he was ever going to be, then I took my hand away and watched while he fell forward into the snow. I had to pry his fingers apart to get the wallet in them. I made sure he had a good hold on the thing then I laughed again.