So Nude, So Dead (11 page)

When it passed, he was breathing hard, and his face was bathed in sweat. He struggled to his feet, breathed deeply, the restlessness stirring deep within him.

He began walking then.

Chapter Ten

The rain began at four-twelve. It was a light drizzle at first, fine and cutting, driven by a strong wind. It lashed into his face as he walked, leaving his cheeks raw and cold, It penetrated his jacket, seeped into the collar of his shirt. The streets were almost empty, and they grew slick with the fine spray of the rain.

And then it began in earnest. Jagged streaks of lightning ripped their way across the sky, glaring white against the blackness. The thunder roared its hollow song, and the rain came down in huge drops, pelting the street, pattering on the pavements in furious accolade.

He lifted the back of his collar, dug his hands into his pockets. Tilting his head against the onslaught of water, he kept walking.

There was a fury to the sudden storm that matched the restless seething within him. Each thunderous boom found a responsive echo in his chest. Each twisted crackle of lightning tore through his nerves. He walked, and the thunder rolled overhead, and the lightning flashed in the sky. His shoes were sodden, and his clothes were plastered to his body. The water streamed down his face in rivulets, spilled onto his neck, rolled down his back.

In the distance, he saw two yellow eyes glaring into the night, heard the rumble of a motor. He squinted his eyes against the rain, saw the white top and the green body of a police car. The car turned the corner, headlights reaching out into the darkness.

He ducked his head, walked quickly into an alleyway, flattened himself against a door.

He heard a faint movement on his right, and then a tired voice asked, “Bad night. Want some fun, mister?”

He turned, startled. The girl wore a tight silk dress. Her eyes were cloaked in shadow, and her mouth was tilted upward in an inviting smile, a false smile that betrayed her profession. He faced her, ready to answer, and then he saw the fright jump into her eyes.

“Holy—Jesus!” she said. She looked at his face hard. He saw her wet her lips, and then step out into the rain. He watched the rapid swing of her buttocks in the clinging dress. Her high heels clicked against the asphalt as she hurried down the alley away from him. She looked back once, anxiously, then quickened her step. He listened to her footsteps die away, then shrugged his shoulders.

Did he look
that
bad? Sure, he needed a shave, but…

Quickly, he passed his hand over the stubble on his chin. It was rough, certainly, but not so bad that it would send a hooker scurrying away. Aimlessly, he looked at his open hand.

The palm was streaked with black.

What? How the hell…

It came to him all at once, and he lifted his hand to his hair, ran his fingers through it. When he pulled his hand away, the fingers were pitch-black.

The shoe polish! God damn it, the shoe polish was running in the rain.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Quickly, he wiped his face, watching the white handkerchief turn black. With sudden clarity, he realized that his hair was probably half blond and half black now. That was great! All he needed was more attention than he was already getting.

He ran the handkerchief over his head until the cloth was completely black. He noticed the upturned cover of a garbage can, full of water. He stepped down, cupped his hands, shoveled water from the lid to his hair. His hands ran black, and he kept scooping water until the blackness turned milky gray, and then vanished completely. He took his tie from his pocket, wet the edge, and daubed at his eyebrows.

Standing up again, the knees of his trousers muddy and wet, he walked out of the alley and onto the main street again. He paused in front of the first store window he came to. Even in the semidarkness, he could see that his hair was blond again.

Ray shrugged. Was that good or bad? he wondered.

The knife twisted into his gut again, and he stopped wondering about everything. Overhead, the thunder had become muted, the lightning flashes spasmodic and halfhearted.

The street was covered with shining puddles of water now, and the light shimmered in them. The only sound was the sullen drip of a drainpipe.

Ray was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep that night.

He dug his hands deep into his pockets, and started walking again….

At five-thirty, he stole a newspaper from a stack lying bundled in front of a candy store.

His picture was no longer on the front page. In its place were the words:
KRAMER
’
S DRUMMER SLAIN
. Rapidly, he turned to page four. The police were just speculating, of course, but they believed this new development to be linked with the earlier death of Eileen Chalmers. There was a rehash of the first murder, and a new description of Ray, correcting the previous description of his hair coloring. Good old Dale Kramer, Ray thought. There wasn’t much else, except the address of Peter Chalmers, Eileen’s father, who refused to comment on either slaying.

Ray stared at the address for a long time.

Then he threw the newspaper into the gutter.

* * *

The house was on East 217th Street in the Bronx. It rose like a tall, stucco crackerbox, its many windows reflecting the orange light of the dawn. Ray stood across the street, leaning against the iron fence surrounding the junior high school. It was a quiet street, none of the houses higher than three stories. Large shade trees crowded the sidewalks, giving the street the appearance of a shaded lane somewhere in the country.

A large brown-and-white dog trotted by on the other side of the street, glanced briefly at Ray, and then continued its solitary stroll. From one of the houses, Ray heard the strident shriek of an alarm clock, followed immediately by a low grumbling.

Another alarm clock burst into clamoring life, and Ray smiled. He fished a crumpled package from his pocket, dug into it for his one remaining cigarette. The cigarette was brown, stained from the drenching he’d received during the night, and he had to strike five soggy matches before he got one to light.

He had finished the cigarette and was grinding it out under his heel when he saw the man start down the driveway alongside the stucco house.

The man was tall, and he held his shoulders erect as he hurried down the rutted driveway. Ray pushed himself off the iron fence and crossed the street. The man carried a small green lunch pail, and he wore overalls.

As he neared the sidewalk, he saw Ray crossing the street.

Ray raised his head, ran up onto the sidewalk. “Mr. Chalmers?” he asked.

The shoulders pulled back a fraction of an inch, and the posture grew more erect. White brows pulled together into a defiant frown. The man’s lips were tight when he answered.

“Yes?” His eyes were deep brown, so brown against the white of his brows that they looked black.

“I wonder if I can ask you a few questions, Mr. Chalmers?”

Chalmers studied Ray’s face. “You’re the addict,” he said softly.

The words startled Ray. He wanted to turn and run, but his feet were glued to the pavement. “Yes,” he answered.

“Did you kill her?” Chalmers’s voice was steady.

“No.”

Chalmers blinked, the lids closing rapidly over his eyes, then snapping upward to reveal the intense brown again.

“You should have.” He turned his back on Ray, and his head high, started walking toward a ’41 Oldsmobile parking at the curb.

“Mr. Chalmers. Wait—”

Chalmers leaned over, put a key into the door of the car. “Do you know who killed her?” he asked.

“No. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Chalmers nodded, pulled open the car door. “I don’t feel a damn bit sorry for her,” he said, his mouth still tight. “But whoever did it should pay.”

“If you can just answer a few questions,” Ray said.

Chalmers reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a gold watch. He snapped open the lid, looked at the time, then clicked the lid shut again. “I’ll be late for work,” he said. He put the watch back into his pocket.

“Where do you work?”

“Rogers-Mailer. Aircraft parts. Over the Whitestone Bridge. Know it?”

“No, But can I ride with you? I mean, we’ll talk on the way over.”

Chalmers looked steadily at Ray again. “Can’t see any harm,” he said. “Can’t drive you back, though.”

“I know. I just—”

“Well, get in, then.”

Ray walked around to the other side of the car, waited for Chalmers to unlock the door, and then slid onto the front seat. Chalmers turned on the ignition, and started the motor. He let it idle for a few moments, then pulled away from the curb. He stopped at the corner, looked in both directions, then made a right turn toward Gun Hill Road.

They rode in silence for a while. Then Ray said, “It seems you didn’t like your daughter.”

Chalmers kept looking at the road, his hands tight on the wheel. “Ain’t a man alive who doesn’t like his own daughter. Wouldn’t be human if he felt that way. Only sometimes a daughter’s better off dead.”

“And you feel that way about Eileen?”

Chalmers nodded. “I knew it would turn out this way. I knew it from the very beginning. What can an old man say, though? A girl like Eileen needed a mother.” He shifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “Ain’t nothing an old man can tell her.”

“Did you know Dale Kramer?”

“I knew him. I knew Tony Sanders, too. One worse than the other.”

“How do you mean?”

“Didn’t like Sanders from the first time I met him. What would a rich man like him want with my daughter, I asked myself. Wasn’t hard to get an answer, either. I told Eileen to drop him, but you know how girls are. Stupid old man, she called me.” He paused, turned onto the parkway, and was silent for a long time. Then, as if he’d never stopped speaking, he said, “Maybe she was right.”

“But she did drop Sanders,” Ray said.

“Sure. Of her own accord. Nothing I said ever helped her decide.” A look of extreme contempt crossed his face. “Music! Musicians! I know all about musicians, young man. I know all about their breed. So she married one. Wanted to sing, she said. Well, she’s singing now, all right. She’s singing with the angels.” He laughed a short, hard, brittle laugh. “Knew it all, she did. Knew all about musicians. Sure, she knew.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Ray asked.

“About two months ago. She told me all about it then. And about this other terrible thing. I threw her out. There’s only so much a father can take. I told her I never wanted to see her again, told her to forget she had a father.”

The toll gate for the bridge was directly ahead now, and Chalmers dug into his pocket for some change. He slowed the car, pulled up to the booth. Ray turned his head away from the policeman as Chalmers handed him the quarter. Far below him, the fog was lifting from the river.

“That was the last time I saw her,” Chalmers said.

Ray nodded. That was how it always worked. That was the same reaction his own parents had had. He remembered telling them, his father first. He’d told them because he needed money, and there was no other place he could get it. That had been before he learned there were other ways to get money.

His father had threatened to kill him first. He’d ordered him out of the house. Ray had gone, of course. If his father wouldn’t give him money, there was no point in hanging around. His father had come after him, tracing him through his musician friends, offering to help. That was later, of course. The immediate reaction was always rejection.

Until they felt sorry.

Then they always tried to help until they realized there
was
no way to help. Except with money. And how much money can you give a parasite? The cure came next. They offered the cure on a silver platter, and when that didn’t work, they cut you off again, threatening to have you put away.

Ray’s father was unique in that he’d actually called the police—but he had waited until he thought his son had committed murder.

Peter Chalmers. Ray shrugged. He’d have gone through the same up-and-down, on-and-off process, too, given time. Unfortunately, his daughter had been killed before he’d had a chance to overcome his first indignation.

“Maybe I done wrong,” Chalmers said. They were on the span now, the strong silver cables arching overhead like the spires of a cathedral. “Maybe I should have been more understanding. But it was a terrible thing, and I’m only a human being.”

“The heroin, you mean?” Ray asked.

“Heroin?” Chalmers’s eyebrows shot up onto his forehead, and then he began to chuckle softly, a bitter chuckle that was hollow and ghostly in the automobile. “Heroin? I’m not talking about that. I mean the baby. My daughter was pregnant.”

“Are you sure?” Ray asked, surprised.

“Yes, I’m sure.” Chalmers’s voice was tired. “She was a month gone when I saw her, three months gone when she was killed.”

“I don’t understand,” Ray said. “What’s so terrible about that? I mean, she was married and all.”

Chalmers laughed, and the sound died in the car before he spoke again.

“My daughter left her husband’s band six months ago,” he said. “And she and he were legally separated at the same time.”

Chapter Eleven

Look at it like a sheet of music, a complicated score with difficult fingering.

Start a beautiful melody called Eileen, play it light, allegro, for twenty-two bars. Then kill it.

Bring in your subordinate theme, label it Charlie Massine, start it softly, with reminiscent snatches of the main theme, bring it to a climax. Kill it.

Then pull in your beautiful melody again, and this time weave it through with snatches of underlying currents: Babs, Tony Sanders, Dale Kramer, Peter Chalmers.

Sustain a heavy bass with the Peter Chalmers motif, sprinkled with a Dale Kramer pecking at the upper register.

Start a fast-traveling, frantic boogie, label it Tony Sanders. Pull in a handful of harmonious chords, full, throbbing, lingering, and call them Barbara Cole.