Solomon's Vineyard (20 page)

I said: “Sure.” I looked at a clock on the table. It said half past
eleven. Thirty minutes. The Princess's eyes went to the clock, too.

“Honey, I'm sorry about that girl.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

“You couldn't help it.”

“I guess not.”

She ran her hand under my shirt again. “She wanted to join the
Vineyard. She even wanted to be the Bride.”

“Yeah,” I said; “after she'd been doped a little.”

“Don t think about it.” She drank her brandy, and then bit my neck. I
tried to kiss her lips, but she wouldn't let me. I still didn't
understand it. I saw the clock over her shoulder. Twenty-six minutes to
go. She lay with her weight on me. “Darling,” she whispered. I ran my
hand under the pyjama top. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

Now the clock said ten minutes to twelve. She lay naked on the divan,
her breasts soft, the nipples flat, looking like all the whores in the
world. Her eyes were closed and her pink lips smiled a little. Her skin
was pale against the black satin divan.

I poured a glass of brandy and drank it. Then I filled it again. She
opened her eyes and looked at me. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Give me a drink.”

I gave her the glass of brandy. She sat up and drank a little. I sat
beside her on the divan. She leaned over and kissed my neck. Her lips
were wet and cool and soft.

“Honey,” she said. “We
are
going to have a nice time.”

“Yes.”

I kissed her. It was the first time on the lips. It was wonderful. I
wondered why she hadn't let me before. I could feel her lips tighten
under mine. They were getting warm. It felt like I had kissed an
electric battery. I let her go and got up and poured myself another
drink. I felt shaky. The clock said eight minutes to twelve.

“You're not going yet?” she asked.

“Pretty soon.”

“Not yet, honey.” She got off the divan and came over to me. “Not
yet.” She stood close to me and drank from my glass. She smiled at me.
“Karl, do you love me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You don't say that as though you meant it.”

“I do.”

“Say 'I love you'.”

“I love you,” I said.

She put her arms around me. The glass fell out of my hand. Her body
pressed against mine. Her skin was warm. She kissed my lips. There was
that shock again. Her arms around my neck were choking me. I tried to
push her away. She held me. I pushed harder.

“That's right,” she said.

I got away from her. Her eyes were excited. “Now hit me,” she said.
“Hit me.”

I hit her, really hit her. She went flat on the floor. I bent over
her and touched her eyes, but there was no reaction. She was cold. I
looked at the clock. Six minutes.

I went into her bedroom and searched for the forty-seven grand. I
looked everywhere. I looked in the dresser, in both closets, under the
beds, even under the rug. In a chest I found the key to the storeroom
and I put it in my pocket. Then I searched the bathroom. In the
medicine cabinet, in a paper box of Epsom salts, I found the diamonds.
They sparkled in the bathroom light. I put them in my pocket. The Epsom
salts gave me an idea. I went through the other medicine. No luck. I
jerked the can paper roll. Wound around under the paper were twenty
one-thousand dollar bills. That was better than nothing. I wondered if
McGee had got the rest.

I went into the living-room. She was still on the floor, but she had
come to. She looked at me, her eyes dazed. I got the brandy bottle and
tapped her on the head with it. She went out again. I looked to see if
there was any blood. There wasn't because of her hair. The clock said
two minutes past twelve.

I got a blouse and a skirt from the bedroom and put them on her. Then
I dressed myself. I picked her up. She was heavy. I went out the door
with her and across the damp grass to the temple. She made a snoring
noise breathing. Her hair gleamed in the moonlight. The heat lightning
lit up the horizon, but there was no thunder. I carried her in the
basement door of the temple. I put her down and lit my flashlight and
picked her up again. I carried her past where she had killed the guard
to the door to the stairs. I could hear my heart beating, and hers. I
carried her up the stairs and put her down. Under the door at the top I
could see a dim light. I put out the flashlight and opened the door a
crack. Candles made a smear of light at the end of a long room,
lighting a black cross and the kneeling figures of twelve men. The men
were in white and I figured they were the Elders. I smelled incense. A
mumble of words came from the men; they were praying. They knelt in a
half circle around the cross, their backs towards me. I wondered where
Penelope Grayson was.

After a while the men stopped praying and stood up. I got ready to
carry the Princess away, but they went single file through a door near
the cross. They were loaded down with food and bottles of wine and
flowers. A current of air from the open door made the candles flicker,
distorted the shadow of the cross on the wall. I heard chanting from
the next room, and then I noticed something below the cross. It was a
kind of a litter, but with short legs; and on it was a woman. A white
cloth covered all her body except her head and her long blonde hair. I
walked through the darkness to her. It was Penelope Grayson. Her eyes
were wide open, but the pupils were as big as horehound drops. Her face
was peaceful. When I put my hand over her eyes she didn't blink. She
was full of dope.

They were still chanting in the next room. The voices of the Elders
were deep. I tiptoed back and got the Princess. She muttered something
and I hit her with the flashlight. I put her down by the litter and
jerked off the white cloth. Penelope didn't have such a bad figure.
Maybe a little thin, but it had possibilities. There was rouge on her
face and breasts. I stripped the Princess and took Penelope off the
litter and put the Princess in her place. I pulled some pins out of the
Princess's hair so it hung down the way Penelope's had. The chanting
stopped, and suddenly I got spooked. I threw the cloth over the
Princess and picked up Penelope and the clothes and ran to the stairs.
The girl didn't weigh anything at all, and under my palms her skin was
cold. She didn't struggle. Maybe she thought it was part of the
Ceremony. Outside the door, at the head of the stairs, I put the blouse
and skirt on her. They were too big for her. Then I looked in the room.

The Elders were just coming back. They filed in, chanting again, and
picked up the litter. They stood under the cross with the litter on
their shoulders. Now one of them was singing along. I caught some of
the words:

She is the choice one of her that bore her.

The daughters saw her, and called her blessed;

Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.

I didn't know what the hell that meant. The Elders walked slowly with
the litter into the other room. I pulled out my watch and turned the
flashlight on it. It was quarter past twelve. Grayson and the chief
should be outside by now, but I didn't go after them. Instead I crawled
past the cross to the far door and looked through. I saw the big room
where McGee and I had looked at Solomon's casket. Four candelabra
burned on the gold-leaf altar, and the Elders had set the litter down
in front of them. I could see the gleam of the Princess's blonde hair.
The Elders were chanting:

If she be a wall,

We will build upon her a turret of silver:

And if she be a door,

We will enclose her with boards of cedar.

Then an Elder with a clear tenor voice sang:

I am a wall, and my breasts like the towers thereof:

Then was I in his eyes as one that found peace.

They turned and walked in pairs down the aisle to the big front door
of the temple. The one with the clear tenor voice sang:

Make haste, my beloved,

And be thou like to a roe or to a young hart

Upon the mountains of spices.

Then the last two turned and swung the big door shut. I couldn't hear
them any more. I went a little further into the room and got that stink
of decaying flesh. It was like the smell of a too-long-dead mule. I
stepped to one side of the door, so the candles by the cross wouldn't
shine on my back, and waited.

All at once I felt hair rise on the back of my neck. I couldn't see
anything but candles burning in the big candelabra and the light
sliding off the Princess's hair, but I was plenty scared. Then I saw
it, and I was more scared even though I knew what was coming. The glass
top of the coffin opened and a man sat up. He had on a white robe and
above it his face looked blue-white, like fish skin. He got up and
stepped out of the coffin. He was very tall; I guess six and a half
feet, and very thin. He went to the altar and prayed, kneeling in front
of the candles. Wind came through the room, making the candles waver,
and he looked around. I crouched in the shadow made by the door. He
prayed again and then he took a long knife with a gold hilt off the
altar. He went over to the litter, holding the knife against his chest.
He pulled off the white cloth and raised the knife high above his head.
I could see the golden colour of the Princess's skin by his knees.

I turned and crawled through the door. Behind me I heard a sound, as
though somebody had slapped a wall with a wet towel, and then a moan,
but, brother, I never once looked back. I got up and ran past the black
cross and got Penelope Grayson and carried her down the stairs. She
struggled a little; I guess she knew something was wrong. I propped her
against the wall in the basement and shuffled through the dark towards
the outside door. Suddenly something, almost like a big hand against my
chest, stopped me, and I knew then what I had to do before I got the
others. I guess I had been going to do it all the time or I wouldn't
have taken the key to the storeroom. I unlocked the padlock and lit a
match and put the diamonds and the twenty-seven grand of the Vineyard's
money back where they had come from. I thought about the rest of the
money, but I couldn't do anything about it, and by the time I'd got the
padlock closed again I was feeling a little better. I was never cut out
for a thief, I guess.

I crossed the basement and went outside. When my eyes got used to the
moonlight I saw them. They were waiting by a tree in back of the
temple. I recognized Chief Piper and Grayson. About five detectives
were there, too.

“We thought you weren't coming,” the chief said.

Grayson asked: “Where's Penelope?”

“She's safe.”

“Where?” he growled.

I spoke to the chief. “You got the place covered?”

“Yeah. There's a dozen men around.”

“Good.”

I led them to the temple's basement door. I saw a man standing by the
front of the temple; one of the chief's men. We left one of our
detectives at the back door.

“Grab anybody that tries to come in,” I told him.

“Okay.”

We went into the basement. I punched on the flashlight. We went
across to the other door. I nudged Grayson. “Here she is,” I whispered.
I flashed the light on the spot where I'd left her. All I could see was
the brick wall and the cement floor. Brother, my heart stood still, as
the song says.

Grayson said: “What the hell is this?”

I swung the flashlight around the basement. On the other side I
caught a movement. I went that way. She was moving with her face to the
brick wall, feeling it with her hand; looking, I guess, for a place to
get out.

“Penelope!” Grayson called.

“Shut up,” I said.

We went over to her. Grayson took her arm rind turned her around. Her
eyes didn't look quite so bad. There was a trace of surprise in them.
“Where . . .?” she began.

Grayson said “Penelope, don't you know me?”

We left a detective with her. I led the chief and Grayson and the
three other dicks to the inside door and up the stairs. I opened the
upper door. The first room looked just as I'd left it, candles still
burning in front of the cross.

“Come on,” I whispered.

We tiptoed across the room to the door. The Princess was lying on the
litter in front of the altar, the white cloth in a pile at her feet. I
couldn't see the tall man. We went over to the a tar. I heard Grayson's
breath rush through his nose, the Princess's left breast was smeared
with blood. “That's where Penelope would have been,” I told Grayson.

I looked for the gold dagger, but it wasn't on the altar. The others
were staring down at the Princess. “God! What a babe!” one of the
detectives whispered. I saw bloody handprints on her thighs.

A deep voice said: “Who desecrates my temple?”

The tall man was coming towards the altar from a corner of the room.
He had the dagger in his hand and his eyes were a bright blue, almost
as though they were lit up from the inside. He came slowly, his long
legs stiff, as though he wasn't used to walking. His face, below the
wild eyes, was grim.

“Jesus God!” Chief Piper said. “It's Solomon!”

The man kept on coming. He raised the dagger, holding it in his
clenched fist. I saw blood on the blade. Chief Piper screamed, the way
a rabbit does when it's being killed, and turned and ran. I felt like
running, too. Solomon took two more slow steps and then four of us cut
loose at him. The flash of powder blinded me; the reports echoed
crazily, hurt my cars. Solomon staggered, as though someone had pushed
him, and then, hunched over, ran towards his coffin. We all fired at
him, making a noise like a tommy-gun going full blast, but he reached
the coffin and fell headlong inside. I guess that was where he wanted
to be. We stood with our guns, looking at the coffin.

Chief Piper came back from where he had run to, his face chalk white,
his eyes too big for his head. He asked: “Is he dead, boys?”