Dead Low Tide, page 17
“I think we’re going to jail you for a few years, son. We’ve got a witness, haven’t we, George?”
George nodded and got up and left the office, closing the door behind him.
Seventeen
THE SOUND OF George’s heavy tromping faded quickly through the closed door. Wargler’s chair creaked. He smiled at Roy Kenney.
At last Kenney said, “As I think about this, sir, I hope you will forgive my getting a bit worried. It occurs to me that with this much violence in a city of this size, there must be quite a bit of pressure on you. And I do not like the thought of becoming a sacrificial lamb—on faked evidence. I rather imagine your witness will be well trained.”
“You don’t have to worry, son. We don’t work that way. Gawd damn it, I wisht that new tape had come in time.”
“I’m getting everything, Chief,” the policeman-stenographer said.
There was a long time of silence in the office. I looked around. Nobody except Wargler was looking directly at Roy Kenney. The rest of us kept our eyes away from him, as though it was a shameful thing such a person existed, and to look at him gave some confirmation of existence.
My mosquito bites were itching. Something had happened to the lights in the office. It took me a minute to figure it out. I looked then at the windows. It was early-morning gray out there. A gray world. The right time for snook in the pass. The time to get big reds near the jetties. The time when the Macks start to slash at the bait out in the Gulf.
What witness, I wondered? Elly had acted funny. I hoped to God she’d caught a glimpse of him. Anything to smash that smug exterior—anything to turn him into something that cringed.
It was funny how he could bring out the animal that crouches deep inside you all the time. We were a pack of tame dogs, forced to sit amicably with a wolf. But one little word and we’d fall on him and tear him to small bits.
The Chief started to hum “Humoresque” in the silence. “Dum deedum deedum dedum—dedum de dum de deedee dum—Hear ’em coming. Nervous, son?”
“Not very. Should I be?”
“That’s up to your conscience. Would be, I mean, if you had one. I think you got a hole where it should have been.”
They were at the door. We all looked at the door.
It opened and my throat filled and my eyes filled, and my fingers dug into my legs so hard I found the marks three days later and couldn’t think for a time what had made them.
The door opened and my long-legged, brown-eyed blonde came in. My life came walking back through the door. My warm life stood there, just inside the door, and her eyes found mine first and they were filled with gladness. And I got to her, and the damn tears were running right down my face, and I manfully tried to suppress small broken-drain sounds, and got my arms around the good tall warm strong feel of her, with the sweet-scented hair, and her forehead grinding against my cheekbone in a well-remembered way, while all I could do was say her name, over and over, like an incantation.
We had blocked the door and George was still out there in the hall. There was an explosion of movement behind me and a hoarse yell, and before I could turn something drove hard into the small of my back. It was like being bunted by a city bus. It drove me right out the door, Christy in my arms, and we piled into George and all went down in a scrambling heap on the tile floor.
Somehow I landed across George, with Christy across me, pinning my legs. George reacted like a rodeo bull, bucking us both off his squat powerful frame. It slid me along on my face and I swung around in time to see George, on his stomach, rest the stubby barrel of a revolver on his forearm. The white shirt and khaki pants were running fleetly down the corridor which was dim with morning.
I saw George stick his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. The running figure was ten feet from the main door. George fired. The shot-sound was resonant in the corridor. The glass in the main door exploded and the tinkling sound as it broke on the tile was mingled with the sound of George’s next shot. The door was swinging and I saw the khaki pants going down the steps, so just the white shirt was left. George fired the third time and the other half of the door exploded.
George sat up and looked about to cry. The whole herd was thundering down toward the door. George grunted to his feet and ran heavily after them. They all went out into the gray morning, with the Chief yelling orders.
I helped my girl up. I kissed her. It was fine. I kissed her again. There were distant shots, and a yell, and more shots. I kissed my girl again. It was dizzy-making, so we leaned against the corridor wall. It was a serious and pleasant occupation.
We stopped when the Chief came back, mumbling and stamping his feet, hurrying along.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hey! Chief!”
He went in and got on the phone. We heard him bellowing for the State Road Patrol. We went to the doorway. “Yeah. Headed south on the trail. Gray Chevy convertible. Yes, of course I got a car after him. Here’s the plates.”
I listened. “That’s my car,” I said weakly.
The Chief continued, “Roy Kenney. Five eleven. Hundred and seventy. Gray eyes, brown hair, white shirt, khaki pants. Unarmed. Wanted for murder, and you ask me, I think he’s crazy.”
He hung up and I glanced at Christy and went on into his office and said, with acute indignation, “Chief, just exactly what the hell was the idea in letting me think she was dead? Dammit, I ought to—”
“Shut up and go away. I got things on my mind.”
“That’s my car he’s got.”
“I know. After we picked you up I had Jimmy bring it around. He left it in front with the keys in it, damn him. And that George! George can’t hardly hit the other end of the pistol range. Oh, dear God. Right out of my own office.”
“Why did you let me think Christy was dead? Why?”
“Settle down, son.”
Christy said, “You see, Andy, I saw him. I—I can explain it all, I think. Chief, could we go? Could we leave, please?”
“Sure. Just get out of the way.”
I wanted to kick his fat head. Christy took my arm and tugged, and said, “Please, Andy.”
I looked at her. It was too good a day to stay mad. It was the finest day I could remember.
We walked out. It was too early for a bus. I remembered that they had brought John’s Cad in and put it in the lot beside the office. And I had his bunch of keys among the stuff returned to me. So we walked down arm in arm, unlocked his car, and got in. Before I started up, I turned to her, and said, “My God, you look good for a dead woman.”
“You don’t look so sharp, McClintock.”
“I am pooped.” I drove slowly, and said, “Talk!”
“Light talk? What would you like? Weather? Politics?”
I slowed down enough so I could turn and look into her eyes. “Some day, if there happens to be any words for it, and I think maybe they’ll have to wump up a whole bunch of new words because the old ones won’t half do, I’ll tell you what happened to me when they told me—about you.”
The sky was turning bloody in the east, and it was going to be a fine hot day. I turned into Tickler Terrace and let the car pussyfoot down the sand to my place. A slate heron stood on the bank of the creek, looking like ornamentation on a comic ashtray. His eyes, though, were as yellow and fierce as a hawk’s. He half squatted and lunged up and pumped with his wings and suddenly he was something else entirely, something clean and free and not at all comic.
Christy held my hand in both of hers. She looked around and bit her lip. “It happened here, you know.”
“From the beginning, hey.”
“I found out where that girl lived, on Taylor Street, and I went to see her at four o’clock. It was a hard thing to do, Andy. There was no good place to start. She was hostile, you know. And nervous. And right from the start I knew that she knew something. And—Well, they had you locked up. I told her what it meant to me to have you accused of something I knew you didn’t—couldn’t do. And she wanted to know how I could be so sure you hadn’t. That was pretty ridiculous, and it got me kind of sore. I accused her of protecting somebody. She sat on the bed and I sat on the chair, and she had such a lost look on her face.
“Finally she admitted she’d been protecting someone. She said she’d been protecting him for years. She said this person wasn’t really bad. People didn’t understand how it was with him. She said he sometimes did odd things, and he sometimes did—terrible things, but he wouldn’t kill anybody. It wasn’t in him to kill anybody. She said he’d been in trouble and he’d been in an institution, and if they found him, and if he was in any way implicated, they’d hold all those other things against him, and they wouldn’t be fair to him. And that was why she had to protect him.
“We began to understand each other a little better then, Andy. I guess we both had—someone at stake. I was willing to use any weapon. You know. So I began to understand why she was so nervous and upset. And I looked at her and I said, ‘Actually, though, you are terribly afraid that this time he has killed someone, and you don’t know what to do about it.’ She looked at me, and then, sitting there, she sort of toppled over on the bed and began to cry. I sat by her. It was pretty terrible. We found out we liked each other, and one of us had to lose.
“Anyway, she finally said it was something she would have to figure out for herself, and she wanted some time to think about it. She told me to come back later—quite a lot later. Then she would have a chance to make up her mind, and if she decided it was the right thing to do, we could both go down to the police station and she’d tell them the whole thing.
“I left and wandered around and went to a movie. Time went very slowly. Finally I went back there, quite late. She was entirely different. She was cool and very much in control of herself, and I could sense that she had seen the person she was talking about. She said that under no circumstances could she do anything so foolish as get that person mixed up in something, something where he hadn’t done anything really wrong.
“I’d been so hopeful. It floored me. I didn’t know what to do. I got a bus back out here, and I didn’t know what to do next. I had tried to ask her about an envelope, like you said, but I didn’t get anywhere.”
Her hands tightened a bit on mine. “I was alone and I heard this funny noise, like someone scratching a fingernail on my screen door. You know how it is, being alone, and how little noises can get you. I went to the door and listened. Then I thought maybe it was some animal or something. I told myself not to be a darn woman, and I pushed the door open and stepped outside. He—he reached right out of the darkness and caught me by the throat and pulled me over into the shadows. His hand was like steel. I’m pretty strong and I tried to fight, and we sort of staggered over to where the light from the window was directly in his face. I’ve never seen a face like that—a look like that. I never want to see it again.
“He made funny little sounds and he said something about nobody going around knowing all about him. If he didn’t have me by the throat maybe I could have told him she didn’t tell me anything. But you know the way things go through your mind. I guessed she’d probably told him she had told me about him, to scare him or something. And then I remembered something my father told me a long time ago. Things were going around and around and the night seemed to be getting blacker. I just let myself go all limp. He lowered me to the ground and, like I hoped, let go of my throat. It was hard to get all the air I needed without making a gasping sound.
“He didn’t move for a long time and neither did I. Then he bent over and picked me up. He carried me facedown across his shoulder, one arm around my legs. I let my arms hang limp, and his shoulder hurt my stomach. I’m heavy, I know, but it didn’t seem to bother him. It’s a terrible thing when you realize somebody wants to kill you. It’s so—personal. At first you’re just terribly frantic, and then you get kind of cold inside, like an animal or something, and you will do anything to keep it from happening.
“I guessed we were headed toward the bank of the creek. Even carrying me, he hardly made a sound. When we got to the bank, he just let go with his arm and sort of shrugged his shoulder to let me slip off. I fell right on that hard bank. He looked at the water and then he knelt down and put his ear against my chest. I knew I couldn’t stop my heart beating, but I did stop breathing. He put his hand lightly on my throat, and then I guess he changed his mind. I guess he thought the water would do it. He took a handful of my hair and gave a terrible yank. I almost yelled, but I didn’t. He stood up and kicked me, right here. God, you should see the bruise—in Technicolor. Then he took me by the hair and dragged me a little bit and gave one hard yank and let go, and I toppled right off the bank into the water. I got a real good lungful of air before I hit. I kept limp and let the current take me—sort of turning over and over. Right over there. That’s where I went in. I had a chance to look at him once. He was a dark thing standing there watching me. Every time my face was out of the water, I took another deep breath. Finally I could hardly see the shore and I knew he couldn’t see me, so I rolled onto my back and floated. Oh, those stars looked good! So good, Andy. The tide current took me down the bay a ways. I swam back to shore, and I came out down there in the mangroves, opposite where the gas station is. I didn’t go to pieces until I got on dry land. Then it was terrible. I didn’t dare come back here. I was just sopping. I didn’t know what in the world to do. I knew I had to get in touch with the police. I went crawling up through all that underbrush and stuff until I got to the edge of the road. I kept back so headlights wouldn’t shine on me. The gas station was closed. I went around to the back of it, and I picked up an empty oil can and broke the window. There wasn’t any screen on the back window. I opened the catch and put the window up and pulled a crate over and climbed in. The phone is in front, and I was afraid headlights would shine in and somebody would see me, so I sat on the floor. It all took a lot longer than I thought. It was around three, I guess. I couldn’t tell because the water stopped my watch. I got Wargler on the phone finally and told him where I was. He came out with that George, and I had climbed back out the window by then, and I was waiting in the shadows.
“Wargler took me right to his house and his wife found a robe that almost fit me after I took a shower to get the salt off. Then I had a great big strong drink and we talked, and I told them everything that had happened. The Chief decided that I’d seen the man who murdered John Long, and if it was announced that I was dead, it would give him a false sense of security, so he’d stay around. Because if it came out that he didn’t … get me, then he might take off, knowing I could identify him. He put a man to watch Joy’s place and he said they’d better not barge in and question her, because she might alert the man, whoever he was. I asked if they could tell you I was all right, and Wargler said he better not, and he said he’d even give it out as a sex murder to make the man feel even safer. He said you better not know, because he wanted you to have the right reaction, and he didn’t have much faith in how well you could act. But he did promise he’d let you out. I insisted on that, or I wouldn’t stay hidden, I said. They put me in the spare room, and I told the Chief what clothes to bring out of my closet. And I asked him how they’d arrange it, and he said the Hoover brothers were his wife’s first cousins and they’d cooperate to make it look good, getting my body in a net.”
“That Wargler,” I said wonderingly. “Had you like an ace in the hole, and as soon as Roy Kenney saw you, he knew all his time had run out, all at once. I can see what happened to Joy now. From talking to her landlady, I knew he went back. And I think he told her he’d killed you, and maybe told her he’d kill anybody else she tried to talk to. And she could tell right then and there he’d gone over the edge, at last. Like when he killed the kitten in the barn, a long time ago. Then, there was her conflict. She had to turn him in. But emotionally she couldn’t. She’d protected him for too long. So there was only one thing she could do. Retreat to some place where the decision wouldn’t exist. She’s basically, I guess, a good person. But there’s some stain in that blood. He got more of it than she did. And she got just enough to live in her own type of hell. Anyway, if they can get back into that dark place where she’s gone and get the information to her that the police know now, and that her brother is a fugitive … that ought to help bring her out of it because the conflict will no longer exist.”
We got out of the car and walked, hand in hand, into my place.
I opened two cans of cold beer. She sat on my kitchen table and I leaned on the sink, and she made me go over everything that had happened. I’d been ramming around for nearly twenty-four hours, but looking at her was enough to make me feel like a good match for Marciano. The chill beer was nectar. Tickler Terrace was heaven.
It wasn’t pleasant to tell about Mary Eleanor. It wasn’t a happy thing to tell. Poor damn little wench, all fouled up inside, but not enough to get killed for it, not in that way, not with two keen little steel fangs twisting their way into the hollow at the base of the unconscious throat.
I covered all of it, for my Christy, and at the end my voice turned thick and rusty and my eyelids were packed with beach sand, and my leg bones were made from soft putty. The sun was up and I was looking at her. My eyes were focusing wrong. Her head would swell up to the size of a bushel basket and then fade away into something the size of a dime.
I looked at her and said, “A guy can be wrong, you know. He can underestimate something just because it comes with a few laughs. And never know it was exactly right for him until all of a sudden they take it away.”
She looked shy. It looked right on her. Bridal and right.
“You would have found out,” she said.
“At sixty-three. But you knew it, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“When?” I asked her.
“When does a thing like that creep up on you? Click, like a box top? Boing? Thud? Uh uh. Not like that. You realize it all of a sudden, but when you realize it you know you’ve had it coming on … like a virus.”
