The Little Men (5 page)

He was rubbing his face with his hand, and
she knew she had lost him.

“I told you on the phone,” she said, more
desperately now. “I think she drugged me. I
brought the cup.”

Penny reached into her purse again, this
time removing the tea cup, its bottom still
brown-ringed.

Detective Noble lifted it, took a sniff, set it
down.

“Drugged you with Old Grandad, eh?

“I know there's booze in it. But, detective,
there's more than booze going on here.”
Again, her voice rose high and sharp, and
other detectives seemed to be watching now
from their desks.

But Noble seemed unfazed. There even
seemed to be the flicker of a smile on his
clean-shaven face.

“So why does she want to harm you?” he
asked. “Is she in love with you, too?”

Penny looked at him, and counted quietly
in her head, the dampness on her chest gathering.

She had been dealing with men like this her
whole life. Smug men. Men with fine clothes
or shabby ones, all with the same slick ideas,
the same impatience, big voice, slap-andtickle,
fast with a back-handed slug. Nice
turned to nasty on a dime.

“Detective,” she said, taking it slowly, “Mrs.
Stahl must suspect that I know. About what
she did to Larry. I don't know if she drugged
him and staged it. The hunting knife shows
there was a struggle. What I do know is there's
more than what's in your little file.”

He nodded, leaning back in his chair once
more. With his right arm, he reached for another
folder in the metal tray on his desk.

“Miss, can we talk for a minute about
your
file?”

“My file?”

“When you called, I checked your name.
S.O.P. Do you want to tell me about the letters
you've been sending to a certain address in
Holmby Hills?”

“What? I … There was only one.”

“And two years ago, the fellow over at
MCA? Said you slashed his tires?”

“I was never charged.”

Penny would never speak about that, or
what that man had tried to do to her in a back
booth at Chasen's.

He set the file down. “Miss, what exactly are
you here for? You got a gripe with Mrs. Stahl?
Hey, I don't like my landlord either. What,
don't wanna pay the rent?”

A wave of exhaustion shuddered through
Penny. For a moment, she did not know if she
could stand.

But there was Larry to think about. And
how much she belonged in Number Four. Because
she did, and it had marked the beginning
of things. A new day for Penny.

“No,” Penny said, rising. “That's not it.
You'll see. You'll see. I'll show you.”

“Miss,” he said, calling after her. “Please
don't show me anything. Just behave yourself,
okay? Like a good girl.”

Back at Number Four, Penny laid down on the
rattan sofa, trying to breathe, to think.

Pulling Mrs. Stahl's book from her dress
pocket, she began reading.

But it wasn't like she thought.

It wasn't dirty, not like the brown-papered
ones. It was a detective novel, and it took place
in England. A woman recently exonerated for
poisoning her lover attends her school reunion.
While there, she finds an anonymous
poisoned pen note tucked in the sleeve of her
gown: “You Dirty Murderess … !”

Penny gasped. But then wondered: Had
that inscription just been a wink, Larry to
Mrs. Stahl?

He gave her books she liked
, Benny had said.
Stiff British stuff that he could tease her about.

Was that all this was, all the inscription had
meant?

No, she assured herself, sliding the book
back into her pocket. It's a red herring. To
confuse me, to keep me from finding the
truth. Larry needs me to find out the truth.

It was shortly after that she heard the click of
her mail slot. Looking over, she saw a piece of
paper slip through the slit and land on the
entry-way floor.

Walking over, she picked it up.

Bungalow Four:

You are past due.

—Mrs. H. Stahl

“I have to move anyway,” she told Benny,
showing him the note.

“No, kid, why?” he whispered. Mr. Flant
was sleeping in the bedroom, the gentle whistle
of his snore.

“I can't prove she's doing it,” Penny said.
“But it smells like a gas chamber in there.”

“Listen, don't let her spook you,” Benny said. “I bet the pilot light is out. Want me to
take a look? I can come by later.”

“Can you come now?”

Looking into the darkened bedroom,
Benny smiled, patted her forearm. “I don't
mind.”

Stripped to his undershirt, Benny ducked
under the bath towel Penny had hung over the
kitchen door.

“I thought you were inviting me over to
keep your bed warm,” he said as he kneeled
down on the linoleum.

The familiar noise started, the
tick-tick-tick
.

“Do you hear it?” Penny said, voice tight.
Except the sound was different in the kitchen
than the bedroom. It was closer. Not inside the
walls but everywhere.

“It's the igniter,” Benny said. “Trying to
light the gas.”

Peering behind the towel, Penny watched
him.

“But you smell it, right?” she said.

“Of course I smell it,” he said, his voice
strangely high. “God, it's awful.”

He put his head to the baseboards, the sink,
the shuddering refrigerator.

“What's this?” he said, tugging the oven
forward, his arms straining.

He was touching the wall behind the oven,
but Penny couldn't see.

“What's what?” she asked. “Did you find
something?”

“I don't know,” he said, his head turned
from her. “I … Christ, you can't think with it.
I feel like I'm back in Argonne.”

He had to lean backward, palms resting on
the floor.

“What is it you saw, back there?” Penny
asked, pointing behind the oven.

But he kept shaking his head, breathing
into the front of his undershirt, pulled up.

After a minute, both of them breathing
hard, he reached up and turned the knob on
the front of the oven door.

“I smell it,” Penny said, stepping back.
“Don't you?”

“That pilot light,” he said, covering his face,
breathing raspily. “It's gotta be out.”

His knees sliding on the linoleum, he
inched back toward the oven, white and glowing.

“Are you … are you going to open it?”

He looked at her, his face pale and his
mouth stretched like a piece of rubber.

“I'm going to,” he said. “We need to light it.”

But he didn't stir. There was a feeling of
something, that door open like a black maw,
and neither of them could move.

Penny turned, hearing a knock at the door.

When she turned back around, she gasped.

Benny's head and shoulders were inside
the oven, his voice making the most terrible
sound, like a cat, its neck caught in a trap.

“Get out,” Penny said, no matter how silly
it sounded. “Get out!”

Pitching forward, she leaned down and
grabbed for him, tugging at his trousers, yanking
him back.

Stumbling, they both rose to their feet,
Penny nearly huddling against the kitchen
wall, its cherry-sprigged paper.

Turning, he took her arms hard, pressing
himself against her, pressing Penny against the
wall.

She could smell him, and his skin was
clammy and goosequilled.

His mouth pressed against her neck
roughly and she could feel his teeth, his hands
on her hips. Something had changed, and
she'd missed it.

“But this is what you want, isn't it, honey?”
the whisper came, his mouth over her ear. “It's
all you've ever wanted.”

“No, no, no,” she said, and found herself
crying. “And you don't like girls. You don't like
girls.”

“I like everybody,” he said, his palm on her
chest, hand heel hard.

And she lifted her head and looked at him,
and he was Larry.

She knew he was Larry.

Larry.

Until he became Benny again, moustache
and grin, but fear in that grin still.

“I'm sorry, Penny,” he said, stepping back.
“I'm flattered, but I don't go that way.”

“What?” She said, looking down, seeing her
fingers clamped on his trouser waist. “Oh.
Oh.”

Back at Number Three, they both drank from
tall tumblers, breathing hungrily.

“You shouldn't go back in there,” Benny
said. “We need to call the gas company in the
morning.”

Mr. Flant said she could stay on their sofa
that night, if they could make room under all
the old newspapers.

“You shouldn't have looked in there,” he
said to Benny, shaking his head. “The oven. It's
like whistling in a cemetery.”

A towel wrapped around his shoulders,
Benny was shivering. He was so white.

“I didn't see anything,” he kept saying. “I
didn't see a goddamned thing.”

She was dreaming.

“You took my book!”

In the dream, she'd risen from Mr. Flant's
sofa, slicked with sweat, and opened the door.
Although nearly midnight, the courtyard was
mysteriously bright, all the plants gaudy and
pungent.

Wait. Had someone said something?

“Larry gave it to me!”

Penny's body was moving so slowly, like she
was caught in molasses.

The door to Number Four was open, and
Mrs. Stahl was emerging from it, something
red in her hand.

“You took it while I slept, didn't you? Sneak
thief! Thieving whore!”

When Mrs. Stahl began charging at her, her
robe billowing like great scarlet wings, Penny
thought she was still dreaming.

“Stop,” Penny said, but the woman was so
close.

It had to be a dream, and in dreams you
can do anything, so Penny raised her arms
high, clamping down on those scarlet wings
as they came toward her.

The book slid from her pocket, and both of
them grappled for it, but Penny was faster,
grabbing it and pushing back, pressing the
volume against the old woman's neck until
she stumbled, heels tangling.

It had to be a dream because Mrs. Stahl was
so weak, weaker than any murderess could
possibly be, her body like that of a yarn doll,
limp and flailing.

There was a flurry of elbows, clawing
hands, the fat golden beetle ring on Mrs.
Stahl's gnarled hand against Penny's face.

Then, with one hard jerk, the old woman
fell to the ground with such ease, her head
clacking against the courtyard tiles.

The ratatattat of blood from her mouth,
her ear.

“Penny!” A voice came from behind her.

It was Mr. Flant standing in his doorway,
hand to his mouth.

“Penny, what did you
do
?”

Her expression when she'd faced Mr. Flant
must have been meaningful because he had
immediately retreated inside his bungalow,
the door locking with a click.

But it was time, anyway. Of that she felt
sure.

Walking into Number Four, she almost felt
herself smiling.

One by one, she removed all the tacks from
her makeshift kitchen door, letting the towel
drop onto her forearm.

The kitchen was dark, and smelled as it
never had. No apricots, no jasmine, and no
gas. Instead, the tinny smell of must, wallpaper
paste, rusty water.

Moving slowly, purposefully, she walked
directly to the oven, the moonlight striking it.
White and monstrous, a glowing smear.

Its door shut.

Cold to the touch.

Kneeling down, she crawled behind it, to
the spot Benny had been struck by.

What's this?
he'd said.

As in a dream, which this had to be, she
knew what to do, her palm sliding along the
cherry-sprig wallpaper down by the baseboard.

She saw the spot, the wallpaper gaping at
its seam, seeming to breathe. Inhale, exhale.

Penny's hand went there, pulling back,
the paper glue dried to fine dust under her
hand.

She was remembering Mrs. Stahl.
I put up
fresh wallpaper over every square inch after it
happened. I covered everything with wallpaper.

What did she think she would see, breathing hard, her knees creaking and her forehead
pushed against the wall?

The paper did not come off cleanly, came
off in pieces, strands, like her hair after the
dose Mr. D. passed to her, making her sick for
weeks.

A patch of wall exposed, she saw the series
of gashes, one after the next, as if someone
had jabbed a knife into the plaster. A hunting
knife. Though there seemed a pattern, a hieroglyphics.

Squinting, the kitchen so dark, she couldn't
see.

Reaching up to the oven, she grabbed for a
kitchen match.

Leaning close, the match lit, she could see
a faint scrawl etched deep.

The little men come out of the walls. I cut off
their heads every night. My mind is gone.

Tonight, I end my life.

I hope you find this.

Goodbye.

Penny leaned forward, pressed her palm on
the words.

This is what mattered most, nothing else.

“Oh, Larry,” she said, her voice catching
with grateful tears. “I see them, too.”

The sound that followed was the loudest
she'd ever heard, the fire sweeping up her
face.

The detective stood in the center of the courtyard,
next to a banana tree with its top shorn
off, a smoldering slab of wood, the front door
to the blackened bungalow, on the ground in
front of him.

The firemen were dragging their equipment
past him. The gurney with the dead girl
long gone.