Tough Guys Don't Dance (14 page)

So it had been worth it. I knew that must be true now. I had to go back and look upon the face of the blonde who was dead. Indeed, I must do it not knowing whether her end came from my hands or belonged to others. Will you ever comprehend me if I say that such knowledge, while crucial to my self-preservation—was I in danger of the law, or of all that was outside the law?—was still not what called me forth so much as the bare impulse to go: that came from the deepest sign I could recognize—the importance of the journey must be estimated by my dread of doing it.

I will spare you those hours while I vacillated in my will. I can only say that it was near to midnight before I had conquered my terror sufficiently to begin the voyage in my mind, and so was ready, in my imagination at least, to leave the house, enter the car and set out over the reaches of a highway whose wind-whipped leaves were at this hour like an onslaught of spirits. Yet, with each detail of this journey foreseen, composing the trip in my thoughts before it was ever undertaken, I now found at the center of my terror the calm of composition itself. So I was finally armed to set out, and was at the door and ready to step into the real air of the night when the knock
resounded again, just as powerfully as a hammer on my tomb.

Some interruptions are too profound to disturb your composure. One's limbs do not have to shake as one encounters the hangman. I pulled the bolt and drew open the door.

Regency stepped in. For the first moment, seeing the strain upon his face and the bright light of anger in his eyes, I had the idea he was there to arrest me. He stood in the foyer and stared at the furniture in the living room and shook his head from side to side, but for so long that I finally comprehended he was revolving his neck against the grind of his own tension.

“I'm not here for a drink, buddy,” he said at last.

“Well, you can have one.”

“Later. We talk first.” He poked the light of his angry eyes into mine, and then in surprise—for I do not think he had ever seen me showing such resolve—he looked away. He could not know for what I had just prepared.

“Are you,” I asked, “working on Sunday?”

“You haven't been down to the West End today, have you?”

I shook my head.

“You don't know what's going on?”

“No.”

“Every cop in town was at The Widow's Walk. Every cop in town.” He looked past me. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

I did. I didn't. I made some gesture to indicate as much.

He sat down.

“Look, Madden,” he said, “I know you lead a very busy life, but maybe you can recollect receiving a phone call this morning from Merwyn Finney.”

“The proprietor of The Widow's Walk?”

“You eat there all the time but you don't know his name?”

“Hey,” I said, “don't break my chops.”

“All right,” he said. “Why don't you sit down, too?”

“Because I'm ready to go out.”

“Finney called about a car, correct?”

“Is it still there?”

“You told Merwyn Finney,” Alvin Luther now said, “that you couldn't remember the name of the woman who was with Pangborn.”

“I still can't. Is it important?”

“Probably not. Unless she's his wife.”

“I don't think she was.”

“Well, good. You're a shrewd judge of people.”

“I'm not smart enough to guess what's going on now.”

“Oh, I could tell you,” he said, “but I don't want to slant your opinion.” He looked into my eyes again. “What's your make on Pangborn?”

“Corporate lawyer. Sharp. On tour with a blonde lady.”

“Anything wrong with him?”

“Just not likable.”

“Why?”

“Cause I wanted to get somewhere with Jessica and he was in the way.” I stopped. There was much to be said for Regency as a cop. Pressure came off him and it was constant. Soon, you made a mistake. “Oh,” I said, “that's her name. It just came to me. Jessica.”

He wrote it down. “Her last name?”

“Still blank. She may never have told me.”

“What was she like?”

“Society lady. Southern California society, I'd say. No real class. Just money.”

“But you liked her?”

“I had the feeling she'd carry on in the closet like a porny star.” I said this to shock him. It succeeded more than I had expected.

“I don't approve of pornies,” he said. “I don't go to them. I wouldn't mind slaughtering five or ten of those porny stars, though.”

“That's what I like about law enforcement,” I answered. “Put a killer in uniform and he can't kill anymore.”

He cocked his head. “Cheap hippie philosophy,” he said.

“You could never stand up to a discussion,” I told him. “Your brain is full of minefields.”

“Maybe so,” he said slyly, and winked. “Let's move back to Pangborn. Would you say he was unstable?”

“Not particularly. I'm tempted to say not at all.”

“Don't.”

“Don't?”

“Did he impress you in any way as a swish?”

“He might wash his hands after making love, but, no, I would not call him a swish.”

“Was he in love with Jessica?”

“I'd say he liked her for what she could offer, and was getting a little fatigued. She may have been too much of a woman for him.”

“You don't think he was in love with her uncontrollably?”

I was about to say, “Not my impression,” when I decided to ask, “What do you mean by ‘uncontrollably'?”

“I'd say it's loving somebody to the point where you're not in command of your actions.”

Somewhere in my mind a mean calculation came forth. I said, “Alvin, what are you leading to? Did Pangborn kill her?”

“I don't know,” said Regency. “Nobody has seen her.”

“Well, where is he?”

“Merwyn Finney called this afternoon and asked if the car could be removed from his lot. But it was legally parked in the first place. So I told him we'd have to put a warning on the windshield. This afternoon I was making a turn around town and thought I'd take a look. It didn't add up right to me. Sometimes you see an empty buggy that's all wrong. So I tried the trunk. It was unlocked. Pangborn was inside.”

“Murdered?”

“Interesting you say that,” said Regency. “No, my friend, he was a suicide.”

“How?”

“He put himself in the trunk and closed it. Then he laid himself under a blanket, stuck a pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”

“Let's have a drink,” I said.

“Yeah.”

His eyes were fixed with fury. “Very strange business,” he said.

I could not help myself. A. L. Regency had his powers. “Are you sure it's suicide?” I asked, although I could see no advantage to myself in the question.

Worse. Our eyes met clearly with that lack of concealment which is palpable: both people are remembering the same sight. I was seeing blood on the passenger seat of my car.

He kept the silence before he said, “There's no doubt it's suicide. The powder marks are all over his mouth and palate. Unless someone drugged him first”—Regency took out his notebook and set down a few words—“only I don't see how you can ram a gun into someone's mouth, shoot him, and then rearrange his body without betraying yourself on the blood spill. The dispersal of blood on the floor and side of the trunk is wholly consistent with suicide.” He nodded. “But I don't,” he said, “have a high opinion of your acumen. You read Pangborn all wrong.”

“I certainly didn't see him as a suicide.”

“Forget that. He's a degenerate faggot. Madden,
you don't even have a clue who's really in the closet.”

Now he looked about the living room as if to count the doors and classify the furniture. Nor was it comfortable to see the place through his eyes. Most of the furniture had been chosen by Patty and her taste was flouncy and full of Tampa Beach money—that is, white furniture and splashy hues in the cushions and the draperies and the throw rugs, loads of flowers on the fabrics, many barstools in puffy leatherette—pink, lemon-lime, orange and ivory for her boudoir and her drawing room—quite a candystripe for Provincetown in winter. Will it give some idea of my state if I admit that most days my mood did not rise to the differences between the hues in Nissen's house and mine?

Regency studied our furniture. “Degenerate faggot” was still smoking on his lips.

I could not leave it there. “What makes you so certain Pangborn was homosexual?”

“I wouldn't term it that. I'd call him
gay
.” How the word offended him. “They ought to spell it ‘Kaposi's syndrome.' ” He drew a letter from his pocket. “Call themselves
gay
and go around infecting one another
systematically
. They're laying in a plague.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “Count your plagues. I'll count mine.” He was that opinionated it would have given me combative pleasure to argue—nuclear pollution for your side, herpes for mine—but not now.

“Look what's in this envelope,” he said. “Was Pangborn gay or was he gay? Just read it!”

“Are you certain he wrote it?”

“I checked the handwriting against his address book. He wrote the letter, all right. About a month ago. It's dated. But he never sent it. I guess he made the mistake of rereading it. That's enough to put the barrel right in your throat and blow it out.”

“Who was he writing to?”

“Oh, you know faggots. They're so intimate with each other, they don't bother with names. Just chat away soul to soul. Maybe at the end they'll deign to use your name once. That's so the flower who receives the epistle will know the dirt is in the right pot.” He went off on his whinny.

I read the letter. It was in strong purple-blue ink, a firm round hand: