L.A. 46, page 20
“You were afraid what it might do to Paul?”
“Yes. Having the strong sense of family pride he has, being the type of man he is, I was afraid he might shoot himself or something like that.”
“Now he has changed overnight?”
“No,” Eva admitted reluctantly, “I don’t suppose he has.”
“Now tell me this. Were you ever really in love with him?”
“I’m beginning to wonder. Why?”
“I can speak out?”
“Of course.”
‘Then you listen to me, young lady. Everything has two sides. I know, from watching the two of you these last few months, whether Paul knew who you really were or not, he worships the ground you walk on. This in spite of the fact that you were different from the woman he’d hoped to find in a wife. But he put up with you.”
“Put up with me?”
“Yes. Not that I’m blaming you, Eva. We’re all the way we are. But Paul is old country. You aren’t. In the old country wives are different. How many times were you waiting for him when he came home from work? How often was his supper ready on time? How much did you worry about how hard he had to work to pay the rent to live in a building like this one or pay for the pretty clothes you wear? Did he ever complain?”
“No. But that could have been a guilty conscience.” Marta Katz nodded her head. “It could have been. But sitting here woman to woman, before the men come back, I am trying to find out how you felt about him. How many times, when he was late, did you walk the
floor like I walked it for my Ernie, crying your eyes out, praying to God that nothing had happened to him, that he wasn’t lying somewhere bleeding in a gutter?”
Eva’s eyes turned sullen. She said in a sharp tone, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Paul was getting what he wanted.”
“No,” Marta said, “no. Like they say in the ads, only a reasonable facsimile. What you gave Paul in return for what he was doing for you he could probably have gotten from Colette. From any woman. And in the end a lot cheaper.” She reached across the table and put her hand on Eva’s. “Mind you now, Eva, I’m not blaming you. I’m on your side, whatever. A woman either feels that way about a man or she doesn’t. If she doesn’t, he’s just a man in her bed, doing what all men do. If they are both young and he’s good at it, it makes marriage bearable. What I’m trying to tell you is this. With the right man it would have been different. Yours was a marriage that shouldn’t ever have been. Whether from nature or not, I wouldn’t know. But in the six months you and Paul have been man and wife, all you’ve been were two people, a girl and a man living in the same place, sleeping in the same bed.”
Eva asked hotly, “Well, for Christ’s sake, how do you know so much about us? And what do you want me to do? Apologize to Paul? Tell him I’m sorry?”
“No,” the older woman said. She took the letter from the top of the box of flowers and put it on the table. “All I want you to do is read his letter, find out his side of the story, so we’ll know how to plan.” She shrugged. “How I know so much about you? When a person is very fond of somebody that person knows.”
Her eyes were still sullen as she opened the envelope with a hair pin. “Why not? But no matter what my dear brother says, it isn’t going to get rid of this thing I have in my body.”
There was a single sheet of hotel stationery, plus a thin sheaf of bills totaling sixty-three dollars. The letter began:
My dear Eva:
It has now been a number of hours since I talked to Dr. Gam and he was kind enough to inform me why you didn’t come home last night and to detail the highlights of the letter you received from a Miss Hilda Schmidt . . .
Eva read the letter without emotion. It was phrased in Paul’s stilted, foreign style. He admitted the inference that they were brother and sister seemed indisputable. But after expressing his deep regret and assuring her he knew how she must feel, he emphatically denied that he’d been aware of their true relationship. As proof, he offered the plea, about which Mrs. Katz had already told her, that before proposing marriage he’d checked with the current officials of Koszeg and had been assured by them that his sister Eva, four years old at the time, had died with her parents, adding that with his own hands he had put flowers on the grave they told him was his sister’s.
He also wrote that the money he’d enclosed, all he had on him at the moment, was for her immediate expenses. He had, he said, taken a single room in the hotel on whose stationery he was writing but would send Mrs. Malloy a check for the next month’s rent and she was to feel free to live in the apartment, alone for as long as it might take them to adjust the situation. When she felt able to discuss the matter of the child, she could reach him at the shop or the hotel.
He reiterated that the disclosure of what they really were to each other had been a tremendous shock to him but that, either as his wife or his sister, his love would always be with her and ended his letter:
Accept these flowers as a small token of my love and respect and remorse. Your devoted,
Paul
Eva’s head had begun to ache. She felt as though she wanted to fill a tub with hot water and sit in it for hours in the vain hope that both the situation and the fetus she was carrying would dissolve.
Whether from genuine shock or because he was lying or from a lack of ability to express his feelings in English, Paul had written a letter as sterile and devoid of emotion as if he’d been ordering some new stock for the shop. There was a postscript.
P.S. While because of your condition I know immediate action is imperative, for the sake of what we have been to each other I would appreciate it if there is no publicity concerning this matter and that you do nothing that might attract attention to our problem for at least ten days, at which time my naturalization will have become effective and there can be no untoward consequences.
Eva put the money in the pocket of her robe and returned the sheet of paper to the envelope.
“Well?” Marta Katz asked.
The girl shrugged. “You pay your money and you take your choice. I still don’t know if he knew. It may be I never will.”
She carried her empty coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it with hot water and set it on the rubber mat to drain. “Now I think I’ll go up to my own apartment. I want to be alone a few hours.”
Mrs. Katz clucked in understanding. “Of course. But when Dr. Gam comes back, he’ll want to know how you are. What shall I tell him, Eva?”
Eva collected her dress and underthings and purse from the bedroom. “Tell him to come up if he wants to. Maybe I can think a little clearer than I was thinking last night. Right now, all I know is I want this thing out of me.”
Mrs. Katz indicated the florist’s box. “And the flowers?”
“Put them in a vase or cut them up and feed them to the garbage disposal. I don’t care what you do with them.”
The sun had gone down below the hills but the lanai was still hot and humid but, Eva thought, not quite so bad as it had been the afternoon before. A faint breeze was stirring the palm fronds. It could be that the weather was beginning to break.
When they saw her, the two men in the lanai smiled and Mr. Katz lifted his hand in greeting. Mr. Melkha pointed the wet end of his cigar at her. Eva walked to the elevator and found the teen-ager from Apartment 33 pushing the button.
Trying to be friendly, Ruby said, “It’s quiet around here on Saturday afternoon, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Eva agreed with her, as the girl held open the door. “Very quiet.”
Ruby pushed the second floor button. “Don’t you feel well, Mrs. Mazeric?”
“Why?” Eva asked.
“I mean because you’re still wearing your robe over your nightdress and I haven’t seen you around all day.”
“Oh, that,” Eva was relieved. “No. I feel fine. I just thought I’d take it easy. After all, what is there to do around here?”
“You said it,” Ruby answered her. “I know what you mean.” Bursting with the need to confide in someone, she added, “But I won’t be around here much longer.”
“No?”
“No. I haven’t told my sister and her husband yet but my boyfriend proposed last night and we’re going to be married in a few weeks.”
“That’s nice.”
As the elevator crawled to the second floor, Ruby went on, “To a Marine who’s shipping out next week. He’s being transferred to the 1st Marine Brigade at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii and we’re going to be married in Honolulu and rent an apartment near the base.”
Eva patted her arm. “I’m very happy for you, Ruby. But aren’t you a little young to get married?”
Ruby was immediately on the defensive. “I’m sixteen, going on seventeen. And my sister Vera was married when she was fifteen.”
As the door of the elevator slid back at the second floor, Eva patted the girl’s arm again. “Be happy, Ruby. You’re a sweet child. I like you.”
Ruby was pleased. “Thank you, Mrs. Mazeric. I like you. You’re as nice as you’re pretty.”
Eva watched the elevator door close. Then she walked down the balcony toward her own apartment, fishing in her purse for her key. For a change, the two models in Apartment 23 weren’t fighting and Miss Lili Marlene’s hi-fi was silent. The only sounds in the court were the dry rubbing of palm fronds and a child crying fretfully in Mr. Romero’s rooms.
The crying child puzzled Eva. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Romero having a child in his apartment. She knew, according to the lease she and Paul had signed, children were not permitted in the building.
She found her key in the bottom of her purse and unlocked her door. A rush of stale air greeted her. Even under the circumstances, Paul had methodically closed and locked all the windows and shut off the air-conditioning unit.
Eva started into the apartment and stopped as the door at the end of the balcony opened and Marty Romero, barefooted, barechested, wearing only a pair of expensive, light-colored slacks and so drunk he could hardly walk, staggered out onto the balcony. As Eva watched, a rather pretty, black-haired girl whom she’d never seen before followed him. Romero turned and cursed her when she tried to clutch his arm.
“Please, Marty,” the girl begged him. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere. Please stay with us. For my sake. For Pepe’s.”
Romero punched her with his clenched fist. “You mind your own goddamn business. Go on. Go tell the old lady I hit you. Holy water on her, too. Nobody tells Marty Romero what he can and cannot do. Ten thousand dollars a fight, that’s what they pay me. Plus five thousand more to go in the tank.”
With blood trickling from her nose, the girl hung on to his arm. “Please, Marty. You’re so drunk you don’t realize what you’re saying.”
“Please Marty, my ass.”
Romero half punched, half pushed the girl away from him and stood a moment clinging to the rail. Then he lifted his head and tried to mimic a girl’s voice.
“ ‘Hah. That will be the day. You leave me be.’ ” He resumed his own voice. “Why didn’t you say the rest of it last night? ‘Leave me be, you dirty Mex.’ That’s what you were thinking. Admit it. You think you’re too good for me.” He was shouting now. “Well, I showed one fancy-pantsed broad this afternoon. I showed her good. Now it might be I’ll show you.”
For a moment, thinking Romero was shouting at her, Eva was indignant. She started to answer him and choked back the words to avoid calling attention to herself as she became aware that Romero wasn’t even looking at her. He was addressing the frightened sixteen-year-old girl whom she’d just left in the elevator and who was now hurrying along the upper balcony to the closed door of Apartment 33.
As Eva looked away from Ruby and back at Romero, the fighter pushed the black-haired girl who was trying to restrain him back against the wall of the building. Then, mouthing obscenities about all women in general, he reeled away from her toward the stairwell leading up to the third floor.
Eva went to the rail to call down to Mr. Katz and Mr. Melkha. Both men were on their feet and in motion and Mrs. Malloy was running as fast as she could back to the open door of her apartment.
Mr. Katz spoke before Eva could. “Get into your apartment as fast as you can, Ruby,” he called. “You do the same, Eva. And when you get inside, lock your doors and put on the chains. Don’t be afraid, either of you. Mrs. Malloy is phoning the police and Mr. Melkha and I will take care of things until they get here.”
22
In spite of the directive issued by Captain Hale of Division Six to keep the area clear, the police were having a hard time controlling the crowd. Within ten minutes after the tenants of the building were evacuated and a police cordon was thrown around it to keep Romero from escaping, two hundred pushing, elbowing, perspiring male and female spectators gathered on the walks and in the street. They milled around the half dozen police cars and the ambulance, which its driver had parked on the garage ramp of the Casa del Sol.
As newcomers joined the curious on the scene, the routine became standardized.
“What’s going on?”
“A guy tried to rape some dame.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. And when an old Joe tried to stop him, he took away his gun and slugged him.”
“He kill the guy?”
“No one seems to know. But that’s the old man’s wife over there. The platinum blonde standing beside the ambulance.”
“Where’s the other guy now?”
“He’s still in the building.”
“Why don’t the cops go in and get him?”
“They can’t. Not without taking a chance on him killing the two women and the boy.”
“What two women? What boy?”
“The ones he has up there in the penthouse with him.
He says he’ll shoot them and himself if the cops try to rush him.”
“Nice, huh?”
“Nice.”
His normally florid face now a deep red, Captain Hale made certain all the exits were guarded, then returned to the group of tenants waiting for him at the command posts he’d established in the front end of the subterranean garage.
“Which one of you is Mr. Melkha?” he asked.
Mr. Melkha stepped forward. “I am.”
“You’re the tenant who was in the lanai with Mr. Katz when this thing started?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine. Tell me just what happened. Start with you and Katz sitting in the lanai.”
“Well,” Melkha began, “we were just sitting there talking. I’m still so frightened I don’t remember what we were talking about. Anyway, a number of things. We’d been there about half an hour.”
“You and Mr. Katz were alone?”
“No. Ruby was on one of the chaises on the other side of the pool, getting the sun and reading the paper. Then she got up and went over to the elevator just as Mrs. Mazeric came out of the Katzes’ apartment and they rode up together. Eva got off at the second floor and Ruby went on up to three. Then next thing I’m really conscious of is Romero staggering out onto the balcony in front of his apartment, talking loud and cursing the girl he brought into the building last night, claiming she was his wife and the boy with them was their son.”
“That was the first you’d seen them?”
“The first time. We didn’t know Romero was married. He certainly wasn’t working at it. Anyway, they fought a few minutes, with the girl trying to get him to go back inside and him telling her that nobody told Marty Romero what he could or couldn’t do, boasting that he got ten thousand dollars a fight plus five thousand more to go in the tank.”
“That would make interesting copy for the reporters.”
“Mr. Katz and I remarked that at the time. That I remember distinctly.” Mr. Melkha thought a minute. “Then Romero, very drunk, saw Ruby getting out of the elevator on the third floor balcony and called out something that at the time didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t.”
“What did he call out?”
“I don’t remember his exact words. But it was something like, Why didn’t you say the rest of it last night? You think I’m a dirty Mex. Admit it’ ”
Hale looked at the teen-ager, “Can you explain that, Miss?”
“Yes,” Ruby said. “I can. I was out with my fiancé last night and it was quite late when I came home. Almost two o’clock. When I came through the arch, Mr. Romero was waiting in front of the mailboxes and he grabbed me and tried to kiss me and—uh—you know.”
“Yeah,” Captain Hale said dryly. “But you didn’t let him kiss you or—you know.”
Ruby was indignant. “Of course not. I’d just become engaged to be married.”
“Did you report the incident to anyone?”
“I told my sister and she told Mrs. Malloy this morning.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Malloy said. “Mrs. Wylie was the third tenant to complain about Romero. I suppose I should have called the police. But I’d given him notice to vacate and I didn’t think anything like this would happen.”
“No one ever does,” Hale said. “That’s what makes my work so interesting. Go on, please, Mr. Melkha,” Melkha’s fingers were shaking as he lit his dead cigar. “Then Romero said another funny thing. He shouted, ‘You think you’re too good for me. Well, I showed one fancy-pantsed broad this afternoon. I showed her good. Now it might be I’ll show you.’ ”
Captain Hale looked at the faces around him. “Do any of you women know what Romero might have been implying by that? Did any of you have any trouble with him earlier?” When nobody said anything, he asked, “Who were the other tenants who complained, Mrs. Malloy?”
Grace Arness tightened her arm around the girl standing next to her. “I was one of them. But that was yesterday noon. I came down here to the garage to get something out of my car and Romero tried to get fresh with me and I had to tell him off. I told Mrs. Malloy what had happened.”
“But you didn’t have any trouble with him today?”
“No. Of course not,” the model lied.
“Please go on, Mr. Melkha.”
