Bicycle Built for Two (40 page)

“Lemme go.”

Finney attempted to jerk away from Alex, but
Alex wouldn’t let him. Instead, he hauled him around and shoved him
at the door. The other men, who had been watching with varying
degrees of approval and amusement, although what they could find
amusing in this situation, Alex couldn’t fathom, scattered aside so
as not to be bumped into by Herbert Finney. Finney rolled toward
the door, unable to get his feet to operate properly.

Rage seemed to bring him to attention before
he sailed through the door, however, because he grabbed the jamb
and stopped his forward momentum. His body, taut with fury, swayed
in the doorway until he drew a bead on Alex with his light-blue,
bleary-looking eyes.

Alex couldn’t recall ever having such hatred
directed at him. That was fine with him. He’d never truly hated
anyone in his life. Until now. Now, as he gazed upon the man who
had ruined Hazel Finney’s life and done his best to ruin the lives
of his children, Alex hated Herbert Finney absolutely. Because this
was so, and because Finney had once again violated Kate’s life, he
actually found himself gesturing the man to come forward and fight
him. He wanted to feel his fists crunching against that ugly
jaw.

“Damn you,” Finney muttered in a low,
threatening voice. “Damn you.”

“Come on,” Alex challenged. “Face me like a
man. I’m bigger than your daughter. I suppose you only beat up on
women, don’t you?” Alex then did something he’d never done in his
entire adult life. He spat on the floor of Kate’s apartment. “You
don’t like to fight people who can fight back, do you? You’re a
coward and a bastard, aren’t you?”

Finney’s eyes opened so wide in shock and
wrath that Alex could see the individual red veins standing out
against the yellowed whites. “What are you saying to me?” Finney’s
eyes thinned to mean-tempered slits. “Who the hell are you, you son
of a bitch?”

And with that, he heaved himself away from
the door frame and lumbered at Alex. The man was huge. Alex
suspected that when Finney did work, he worked at hard manual
labor, because his hugeness didn’t look as if it were composed of
excess fat. That being the case, he braced himself on wide-apart
feet, knees loose, thigh muscles tight, and prepared to do battle.
He was more than ready.

Finney’s arms didn’t windmill violently. He
approached Alex like a trained boxer, his bulging arms supporting
fists the size of a side of mutton. But he was older than Alex and,
Alex expected, not completely sober.

Alex dodged Finney’s first blow with
agility, and landed a quick jab to the man’s stomach, which was
almost as hard as Alex’s own. That surprised him, but didn’t make
him lose his concentration.

Finney roared like a lion and turned around.
In his ire, his face had turned a deep mahogany red. He reminded
Alex of street boxers he’d seen once or twice, and it flashed
through his head that Mr. Finney might even have been one of those
men, who earned drinking money by daring other men to bouts of
fisticuffs. The notion didn’t frighten Alex.

“Come on,” he taunted.
“Come and try to take on a man for a change, instead of a woman. I
know you’re used to beating up on women, but give it a try. Come
one,
Mister
Finney.”

Another roar propelled Finney away from
Kate’s window at Alex. Alex had been hoping for this opportunity.
The older man was clumsy in his fury, and Alex had plenty of time
to draw his right arm back and deliver a punch that crunched like
ice breaking up on Lake Michigan. Finney’s arms windmilled this
time, as he staggered backwards.

It was only when Alex realized the other man
was unable to stop himself that he lurched after him, reaching out
to grab some piece of Finney’s clothing or an arm or a leg. He felt
the other men, who’d clumped up to watch the excitement, rushing
forward, but didn’t see them.

What he saw seemed almost as if it had been
choreographed. Finney staggered across Kate’s floor, his heels
bumping against things he’d previously tossed about in his anger.
But there wasn’t anything to stop him. When he hit the window, his
weight didn’t stop him, either.

Alex couldn’t shut his eyes. He saw and
heard everything. He saw the expression of terror cross Finney’s
face when he realized he’d hit the window. He heard the loud smash
and crunch of glass as the pane shattered. He saw blood spurt out
onto the floor and walls as shards of splintered glass speared
Finney’s flesh. He saw Finney’s mouth open in horror, and he heard
the shriek of terror. And then he saw Herbert Finney disappear out
the window.

A tinkle and smash of glass hitting the
street below preceded the muffled crunch of Finney’s body landing
on top of it. The cry they’d all heard as he fell ended abruptly.
Alex stood in a void of darkness and silence and stared at the
empty space where once a window had been. It seemed like eons that
he stood there, but it couldn’t have been.

All at once, someone bumped him from behind.
He felt hands on his shoulder and his arms. People were clapping
him on the back. He blinked and understood through some automatic
process over which he had no control that he had responsibilities
to fulfill regarding this—this—

God, there was a lot of blood. Where had it
all come from? Surely, Herbert Finney couldn’t have bled that much.
Unless the broken glass had severed an artery. Alex shook
himself.

Good God, he’d killed Kate’s father. Alex
shook his head hard and began to make sense of the words tumbling
out of people’s mouths and assaulting his eardrums.

“That’s the best right—”

“Damn, I think—”

“Good job!”

“Congratulations! That’s the best—”

“Thank God somebody finally—”

He shook his whole body then, knowing he had
to suppress his emotions and take charge. “Uh . . . Somebody’d
better run and get a policeman.” His head felt fuzzy. He knew there
must be something else that needed to be done. Reaching deep within
himself, he added, “And a doctor. Somebody’d better fetch a
doctor.”

“A doctor ain’t going to help him this time,”
said a grinning man.

“I sure as hell hope not,” said another.

Alex glanced at his companions, puzzled. Why
were they all so damned happy? Again, he shook his head, wishing
the fog inside it would clear. “Um, he doesn’t need a doctor?” That
meant he was dead.

But the man who’d rebuffed the doctor idea
only grinned harder. “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

And Alex felt himself being tugged along,
out through Kate’s door, and down the miserable, skinny, dirty,
smelly staircase from Kate’s apartment to the street below. An even
larger crowd had accumulated since he’d gone up those stairs. How
long ago had it been? Not long. Not more than ten minutes. Good
Gad, but it didn’t take long to kill a man, did it?

He commanded himself not to think like that.
Finney was probably still breathing. Certainly, a fall out of a— He
looked up. Kate’s apartment was on the second floor. How far a fall
would that have been? Sixty feet? A hundred? And there had been all
that blood. Oh, Lord.

The crowd seemed to melt before him. Alex
heard buzzing in his ears, as the people whispered to each other.
He imagined some of them pointing him out as the perpetrator of the
villainy.

Or was it villainy? For all Alex knew, there
wasn’t a soul alive who’d mourn the passing of Herbert Finney, if
he was dead.

And if that wasn’t a sad commentary on a
man’s life, he didn’t know what was. By this time he’d made it to
the body. He glanced down and instantly averted his gaze. Herbert
Finney was dead. Nobody could lie like that, with his head twisted
at that crazy angle, and not be dead.

A shudder passed through him, and it was all
Alex could do not to rub his hands over his face. Considering that
such a gesture would denote weakness, he kept his arms at his
sides, stepped away from the body, and waited.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, not
quite sure what to do and hoping other people were doing it without
him. At last, somebody came up with a uniformed policeman in tow.
The officer took in the situation as if such things happened every
day of his week, asked a few questions, received a few answers,
then walked up to Alex, his expression sober.

“I guess you’d best come with me, sir,” the
policeman said.

Alex could only be glad his elegantly
tailored suit and gentlemanly air led the policeman to refrain from
clasping manacles around his wrists.

Still and all, this was it. He, Alex
English, was going to be arrested and tried for murder. Good Gad.
He could hardly believe such a thing could happen to him. And it
had all come about because he’d taken pity on Kate Finney.

# # #

Kate didn’t know what to do. Alex had been
gone for what seemed like hours, and she was not merely frustrated
and sad, but was getting angrier by the second.

Mary Jo, naturally, hadn’t waited demurely
in her room as her brother had told her to do. It wasn’t more than
fifteen minutes after Alex had run out on her that Kate heard his
sister’s discreet tap on the door. Feeling abandoned and
mistreated, she stamped to the door and flung it open. “Yes?” The
word came out more tartly than she’d intended it to, but she didn’t
regret it. As far as Kate was concerned, it was past time Mary Jo
learned a few hard lessons about life.

Alex’s sister blinked at Kate and stammered,
“Um, where’s Alex?”

Throwing the door wide, Kate walked back
into the room, leaving Mary Jo to follow or not, as she wished.
“Beats me. He tore out of here a few minutes ago. I guess he’s
headed to my flat to get my things.”

“Oh.” Stepping uncertainly into her
brother’s room, Mary Jo asked, “Um, are you coming back to my room,
Kate?”

Kate flopped into the chair she’d recently
vacated. She didn’t feel like being badgered by Alex English’s kid
sister. Still, she didn’t suppose Mary Jo deserved out-and-out
rudeness just because she was an annoyingly young and gullible
young lady. If the world were a just place, Kate Finney herself
probably would have been gullible. “Alex told me to wait here for
him. I guess I will.”

“Oh.” Still looking uncertain, Mary Jo eyed
her brother’s room.

Kate was pleased that she and Alex had not
been indiscreet and that his room remained as the hotel maids had
left it earlier in the day. It would have been embarrassing had
Mary Jo seen any dropped items of clothing scattered about. She
waved a hand. “Want to sit down?” She didn’t want her to. She
wanted her to go away and leave her to fume and fuss on her own.
Darn Alex anyhow.

“Um, I guess I’ll go back to our room and
change into my night things,” Mary Jo said after thinking about
it.

“All right.”
Thank God, thank God.
“I’ll wait here a little while. Until Alex brings my stuff to
the hotel.” Unless, of course, he was so mad at her for declining
to marry him that he stayed away all night. Kate didn’t know what
she’d do then. Sleep in her clothes, she reckoned, and go to work
wrinkled. With a sigh, she saw Mary Jo to the door, then went back
to the chair and sat some more.

Unaccustomed to having
nothing with which to occupy her hands and her mind, Kate soon rose
from the chair and scoured the room for something to read. She
found a novel that Alex had stashed in the night-table
drawer:
A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court
, by Mark Twain, and decided
it would have to do.

She’d read as far as the fifth chapter when
a knock came on Alex’s door. Startled, Kate slammed the book shut
and lost her place. “Nuts,” she muttered as she rose from the chair
and went to the door. Because she couldn’t conceive of Alex
knocking on his own hotel door, and because she’d learned caution
in a hard school, she leaned toward the crack between the door and
the wall and said, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Kate,” Mary Jo answered
ungrammatically. “Your brothers are here.”

“My brothers? Billy? Walter?”

“Open up, Kate,” came Walter’s voice. He
sounded worried. “Something’s happened.”

Oh, God
. Fearing the worst—that her mother had died—Kate flung the
door open. Sure enough, her brothers stood there, flanking Mary Jo,
whose face still appeared flushed from sleep.

“They asked at the desk for my room,” Mary
Jo explained. “I said you were waiting for Alex in his room.”

“Yes,” Walter said in patent disapproval.
“But we can discuss that later. Right now, we need to talk about
something even worse.”

Even worse than what? Kate didn’t ask,
knowing what her brother meant. He didn’t approve of Kate’s
residence in a single gentleman’s room, no matter how innocent the
reason, and even if the young gentleman wasn’t there. Kate stepped
aside, allowing all three people entry. “What’s wrong?”

“You’d better sit down, Kate,” her brother
Billy said. Always more sympathetic than his older brother, Billy
smiled at Kate in understanding.

She appreciated him a lot. Nevertheless, she
declined his invitation. “I don’t have to sit down. Is it Ma?”

Both of her brothers shook their heads.
“It’s Pa,” said Billy.

In spite of herself and her unwillingness to
be thought to be doing anyone else’s bidding, Kate sank into her
chair. “What about Pa?” The only thing she could think of that
would have put the serious expressions on her brothers’ faces was
that Pa had done something horrid. Like hurting Alex. Her heart
began aching like a sore tooth.

Walter had been standing beside the bed as
if checking to make sure no one had been doing anything unsavory on
it. With his back still to Kate, he said stiffly, “He’s dead.”

Kate’s brain executed a twirl of confusing.
“Um . . . I beg your pardon?” If their father was dead, why were
the boys looking so worried? Kate would have expected them to be
dancing in the streets.