Soft touch (12 page)

I left the light on, let myself out through the locked door. I collected his belongings, packed them in his bag—after taking out the fat stack of hundreds and stuffing them in my pockets—and wedged the bag in with Lorraine's things. There seemed no point in trying to dress him. It would be a waste of the time that was growing dangerously short. I took his wrists and dragged him to the door and out across the shallow porch, then got him into the passenger seat in the car. It was an infuriating struggle. I went in and checked to see if I had forgotten anything of his. I found his razor on the shelf 90

in the crude bathroom. I took it out and hurled it far out into the lake. The black metal suitcase was under the bed. I looked inside. The money was there. I took my pistol and the Jap automatic down onto the dock and threw them out into the lake and listened to the noise they made. Like stones. Thirty feet from the end of the short dock, the lake floor shelves off steeply.

I got into the car and pushed him over so that he slumped against the window, the closed window. I knew the precise place to go. The county road follows the lake shore. Half a mile east of the camp, it practically overhangs the lake. I knew the spot well. E. J. and I had fished for bass there, in the late summer when the water is warm and the bass are deep. You can't anchor. You tie up to one of the bushes that cling to the sheer rock wall. Cars go by fifteen feet over your head, and you fish in seventy feet of water. They say it used to be a good place for lakers before they were all fished out.

I saw but one lighted camp along the lake shore. When I came to the spot, I turned off motor and lights and got out and looked the situation over. The barrier along the edge of the drop-off was of concrete posts and heavy cable. I had forgotten how extensive the barrier was. I began to feel terribly afraid that it was going to be impossible. But when I walked to the far end I saw how it could be done. There was room to drive the little car off the road and around the end of the fence. And there was a flat space on the wrong side of the fence that gradually became narrower until it was too narrow for the car, but by then it was over the deep water. I drove the car around and as far as I dared. I put the lights off. I left the motor running, left it out of gear. I squeezed out through the small space left when I opened my door against the fence. I held on to the fence with one hand, reached back in and banged the lever up with the heel of my hand, forcing it into low. The car bucked but did not stall and began to crawl. I slammed the door on my side. It moved forward in the night. It passed me. When it was fifteen feet beyond me, the right front wheel dropped, and dirt and loose stones fell to the water be-

low. I thought for a moment it would cling there. The motor had stalled. Then it tipped farther, quite slowly, and then suddenly it went. I leaned out. It landed upside down and sent out a sheet of spray that was white in the weak moonlight. It seemed to hesitate on the surface, and then the water closed over it. I could hear the waves it had made running along the shore line, disappearing in the distance. Bubbles broke on the surface. The roiled water gradually became still.

As I climbed over the fence I heard a car coming. I ran across the road and up the steep slope, scrabbling up on my hands and knees. I sat there. A pickup truck sped by at a dangerous speed and rattled away into the distance.

I slid back down and walked back to Camp Sootsus. I scrubbed up the few blood spots. I thumbed the copper screening back together so that the holes were small and inconspicuous. I carried the carton of groceries far into the woods and left it there, cursing myself for forgetting to put it in the car. At twenty after two I crawled under the camp, dragging the tin suitcase. I worked it around in front of me and pushed it far back, completely out of sight.

I turned out the lights after closing all the windows and making up the bed Vince had slept in. I locked the door, put the key in its proper place on the window sill, and walked up the drive.

I made the two miles back to the village as quickly as I could, trotting until my wind was gone, and then walking until I had stopped wheezing, and then trotting again. I walked through the village. Dogs barked. When I was beyond the village, I began trotting again. Each time I heard a car coming behind me, I turned and walked backward, frantically thumbing a ride. It was three-thirty when the truck stopped for me, a big green tractor trailer combo. I climbed up into the cab. There was a stunted wiry little man at the big wheel.

"Kinda late for walking, pal."

"Thanks a lot for stopping. I'm going to Vernon."

"First place we come to, pal," he said, working the 92

big rig up through the gears. "Like I said, it's late for walking."

"It sure is. You see, it's like this. I got to be in Vernon early in the morning. They thought they could get my old pickup truck fixed back there in the village in plenty of time, and I was helping work on it, but then the others quit and I was working on it alone and I figured I could get it going but along about an hour ago I plain give up on her and figured I'd better figure out some other way of getting down to Vernon to meet my wife coming in on the early train so she won't be worried or anything, and by then it was too late to get anybody to drive me on in and I couldn't get the lend of a car from anybody on account of I had hard luck and racked up a couple cars a while back and I couldn't get no bus connection this time of night so I figured I'd start out hitching and nobody else, going like hell, showed any sign of stopping until you come along and I sure am thankful to you and I guess now I'll be able to get a little sitting-up kind of sleep in the railroad station."

"Oh," he said.

He let me off a mile and a half from Tyler Drive at a few minutes after four. I let myself into the house at quarter after. By half past I had cleaned myself up and changed back to the same clothing I had worn when I had stopped in the bar at the Hotel Vernon. I felt stupefied by exhaustion. I mixed a monster drink of Scotch and belted it down and felt it hit bottom. I dribbled a little from the bottle on the front of my jacket.

At twenty minutes of five, with the green-ink note in my hand, I went onto E. J.'s front porch. I put my thumb on the bell and kept it there. I kicked the front door heavily and constantly. And I did a little yelling.

Chapter 9

When E. J. swung the front door open, his little blue eyes were popping sparks at me and his face was blotched with angry red. His white hair was tousled, and he wore a baggy little gray robe. My mother-in-law was halfway down the front stairs clutching a shiny purple robe around her and looking angry and alarmed.

"Stop this damn racket at once!" E. J. roared at me. "At once. You'll wake up this whole half of the city, damn it. What's wrong? You're drunk."

I rocked from side to side and leered at him. "Not so damn drunk I can't read, pops."

"Can't read! Can't read? What the hell has that got to do with anything?"

"See'f you can read, daddyo," I said and handed him Lorraine's note.

He turned it toward the light. His lips moved as he read it. He glanced sideways at his wife and said, "You better come in, Jerry." His tone was different.

Edith Malton came heavily down the rest of the stairs and said, "What is this? What is happening?" She snatched the note away from E. J. She read it at a glance. "What have you done to my little girl?" she wailed.

I wobbled into the living room and collapsed into a chair and looked at them blearily.

"Make him some strong coffee, Edie," E. J. ordered.

"I will not. Not until I find out what happened."

"It's just a little spat," E. J. said.

"Not a spat. An equation, pops. A plus B equals C, D and E."

He sat on the arm of the couch and looked at me bleakly. "See if you can pull yourself together, Jerry. It sounds as if Lorrie has left you."

"She sure has." 94

"Did you have a fight? What happened to your face?"

"She gouged me, E. J."

"Why?"

"Know about the house guest? Know about my old war buddy, Vince?"

"Lorraine mentioned him," Edith said very coldly.

"Came home early this afternoon. Hell, yesterday afternoon" What time is it, anyway?"

"Nearly five o'clock in the morning, son," E. J. said.

"Well, I came home about three in the afternoon. Maybe a little later. Car ran out of gas down around the corner."

"I saw you go by with a can of gas later on," Edith said. "I wondered what the trouble was. Wasn't Irene with you?"

"Yes. Stopped her from going to the house. Didn't want her there. It was a mess."

"Just what do you mean?" E. J. said.

"Hate to have to say this. But I better. Car ran out of gas. I wasn't spying on anybody. Never entered my mind. Found Lorraine in bed with Vince."

Edith gave a squeak of pure outrage and disbelief. "That is a vile lie!" she said. "Our Lorrie would never never—"

"Shut up!" E. J. brayed. "Then what?"

"There was, you might say, a fight, E. J. A big old battle. I got gouged. I wanted to kill the both of them. But I didn't. Lorraine locked herself in the bedroom. I couldn't beat up on Vince. He's still too weak from his operation. I had a couple of drinks. I didn't go back to work."

"I wondered about that," E. J. said. "You usually check in at the office before you go home."

"Didn't even think of it. Too upset. I stormed out and had a few drinks here and there and then I went back. Vince was asleep. Lorraine wasn't home. Mandy Pierson stopped by. She was trying to get in touch with her. I don't know what for. I left a note for her to call Mandy. When we fought she said she was going to leave for good. I thought it was bluff. I got restless and went out

again. Vince was still sleeping. I went down to the hotel and had a drink. Then I drove around, trying to get things straightened out in my mind. You know. I got home a little while ago."

"Dead drunk," Edith said.

"Will you kindly shut up!" E. J. roared at her.

"Well, I got home and I found that note you've got, Edith. She's gone. Her car is gone. All her good clothes and jewelry are gone. And my old buddy is gone too. Bag and baggage. She took off with him. That's the equation I was telling you about. They ran off together in her car."

E. J. looked very troubled. There was silence in the room. Edith said, "Humphf! The whole thing is a tissue of lies. Our little Lorrie would never never ..."

And I was suddenly very tired of that. I said, "Listen to me a minute. I'll tell you what your Lorrie will do and won't do. Your precious delicate little Lorrie. She's been a lush for five years and she's been getting worse. You people haven't admitted that to yourselves, but in your hearts you know it. You've seen it. She spends all day every day with a glass in her hand."

"Whose fault is that?" Edith demanded.

"Yours, maybe. I married her too damn fast. I didn't know her, and I didn't do any checking. Maybe you think that during her college days she was the campus queen. One of her college pals got stoned one night at our house and I got the word. She was the college pushover, Miss Campus Roundheels. How many times do you think I've had to go find her in parked cars at parties or at the club and yank her out, all smeared up with her lipstick, clothes all rumpled, tipsy and silly and disgusting?"

"Never!" Edith said.

E. J. looked at her. He suddenly looked a hell of a lot older. "Jerry knows what he's talking about, Edie. I've known it too."

Her long face sagged and she looked like a tired and overworked horse. "Couldn't you control your wife?" she asked.

"Couldn't you raise a daughter? Hell, this doesn't get 96

us any place. This just happens to be the first time I caught her in bed."

"Was she . . . clothed?" E. J. asked in a strained voice.

"She was naked as an egg."

"Oh."

I pushed myself to my feet. "Well, she's gone. It probably could have waited until morning. But I thought you ought to know. I'm not going to look for her. She can stay gone."

"You never loved her," Edith said.

I looked at her for a few moments. "I'll buy that. No, I never did. I thought I did. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. She thought so too. It's a funny thing about love. You can't really love without being loved back. So I never loved her. She was incapable of love."

E. J. said, "The way you speak of her. It's . . . odd. As if she was dead."

It shook me for a moment. "As far as I'm concerned, she is."

Edith started to cry. It was a sound that did not differ very much from her whinnying social giggle. E. J. walked me out onto the porch.

"I don't know what to say," he said.

"I guess it's finished."

"I don't know what we did wrong. I don't know where it started. She always had everything she wanted. We tried to do everything for her and Eddie. I want her back, Jerry. I'm going to phone the police and give them the license number and description of the car. I want her back. What is the license number?"

"EX 93931," I said. He repeated it after me. It would be hard to read. It would take a skin diver with a good underwater light to read that license number.

"She's of age and it's her car," I said. "If she doesn't want to come back, the police can't make her. I don't know if they'll even look."

"She's a missing person, isn't she?"

"She sure is, E. J."

"Don't try to come to work tomorrow . . . today."

"You still want me working for you?"

"Why not, Jerry? Why not?"

"Say, I'd like to have that note she left me."

"Why?"

"I'd just like to have it. Okay?"

He nodded and went in and came out with the note. I put it in my pocket. We shook hands. It seemed a rather odd thing to do. His hand was small and soft, like a girl's.

"You didn't get your coffee," he said.

I could hear the endless sound of Edith crying. "That's okay."

I walked home. It was getting gray with the false dawn in the east. I didn't want to sleep in the room Lorraine and I had shared. I couldn't sleep in the bed where I had found her with Vince. The other guest room was not made up. I found sheets and made up the bed. I fell into sleep as though I had been beheaded.