Easter beamed his flashlight into the back seat. It pointed like an accusing finger at the gun on the floor beside Voss’s knee. “See it?”
“Yes.”
“Recognize it?”
“No—I don’t know—I’m very ignorant about revolvers.”
“You can’t be very ignorant or you wouldn’t have called it a revolver.”
“I—I thought guns and revolvers were the same.”
“Did you?” The light hadn’t moved off the gun; it was mercilessly steady. “Well, it is a revolver and a very interesting one. Note the ramp built up along the barrel. That’s for more accurate sighting. Know anyone who goes in for target shooting?”
“No.”
He made a sound of disbelief. “The gun’s a common make, a Colt .38. What makes it uncommon is the fancy hand-made grip, and the fact that it’s one of a pair. And the other one of the pair is in Ballard’s study. I saw it there this afternoon.”
She turned away. The ceiling light of the garage was on, and she could see, in sharp contrast to the convertible and its contents, the ordinary items of her everyday existence: her gardening tools, the canvas gloves she wore to protect her hands, the trunkful of woolen clothes she had stored away for the summer, the old bicycle she used sometimes for exercise. They all seemed remote, like the day at the beach with Lewis. It was as if she would never again be able to take up her life where she had left off. The stitch had been dropped, and even if she could return to pick it up, the pattern had already, and inexorably, been changed.
She spoke wearily, “I have a legal right to say nothing.”
“That’s true.”
“I think I’ll—go in now.”
He followed her back into the house. His face was unnaturally red, the face of a man trying to control himself and restrain his anger. He walked the length of the room and back again, slowly, heavily, his full weight on every step.
“Charlotte…”
“You’d better make you report.”
“Not yet. I can hold off for a few more hours. You’ve been away, understand? You’ve been away and you haven’t come back yet.”
“I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never gone. I wish I’d never met any of you, Violet or Eddie or you or…”
“Take it easy.” He went out into the kitchen and found a bottle of Bourbon and poured her some in a water glass. “Drink it.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Afraid you’ll talk too much? Look, Charlotte, this is no longer a matter of loyalty. It’s a matter of trying to protect yourself from being ruined.”
“I can’t protect myself. They’re there, Voss and Eddie. I can’t get rid of them.”
“I know you can’t.” He put the glass of Bourbon on the coffee table. “But you can minimize the importance of their being found in your garage. As the case stands now, that’s the point the newspapers are going to concentrate on. Double Slaying in Garage of Prominent Physician—they’ll give it the business, and whether you’re guilty or innocent, you’re going to be smeared. You’ll be accused and tried, not by a jury of your peers, but by a couple of newspaper reporters who want a juicy story, a deputy D.A. who likes to have his picture in the paper, several hundred housewives who resent your position as a doctor, a few disgruntled patients, some or your friends who ‘knew it all the time,’ a couple of W.C.T.U. members who saw you drink a beer once in 1943, and the usual assortment of religious cranks, neurotics, sadists… There’s your jury. Like it?”
“No.” Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been chewing glass.
“What we’ve got to do now is to change the emphasis,” Easter said. “Where Voss and O’Gorman are found won’t seem so important if the man who killed them is found first. If he is found and confesses.” He looked at his watch again. “You haven’t much time to decide. Where’s Ballard?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know who his friends are?”
“Some of them.”
“Where would he be likely to hide out?”
“I don’t think he’d be hiding anywhere near here.”
“Use your head,” Easter rasped. “He’s got to be near here. He didn’t drive that car into your garage and intend to leave it there. He intended to come back, to get rid of it But I don’t know when, and time is running out.”
“What am I expected to do?”
“Find him. I’ll give you three hours.”
“What if I can’t?” Her legs and arms felt cold, brittle as twigs.
“Try. You know his habits, his friends, the places he likes to go.”
She hesitated. “If I find him, what will I do?”
“Tell him to stop running, the race is over.”
“Where—where will you be?”
“Me?” His mouth moved in a smile, but his eyes didn’t change. They looked flat and hard as coins. “I’ll be waiting here. If Ballard turns up I wouldn’t want him to get lonesome.”
She knew from his face that that was what he wanted—for Lewis to come for the car, and for him, Easter, to be waiting, like a lion waiting at a watering hole in the certainty that the antelope would turn up. He didn’t expect her to find Lewis; he was only trying to get rid of her so the two of them could meet alone. A trickle of fear ran down her spine. I must get to Lewis first, she thought. No matter what he’s guilty of, I must warn him against Easter.
She looked across the room at Easter. She felt a surge of hatred for him—for his arrogance, his power, his obsession against Lewis. When she passed him on her way to the door, her fists clenched, ready to strike.
He saw them. His smile vanished. With a swift, violent movement he reached out and grabbed her wrists and held them together against his chest with one hand. With his other hand gripping the back of her neck, he leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers.
He let go suddenly, and she fell back a step, holding the back of her hand over her bruised mouth.
“That’s for nothing,” he said. “That’s for no encouragement, no co-operation. That’s for no pretty smiles, no soft looks, nothing.”
“You’re a cheap, rotten…”
“Beat it,” he said quietly. “Find Lover-boy. My patience is wearing thin.”
At some time in the past hour a Santa Ana had begun to blow from the desert on the other side of the mountain—a hot, dry, choking wind that harried the trees, hurled the dust down the city streets, swept the people into their houses or into the shelter of doorways where they huddled coughing, shielding their eyes with their hands. Bits of refuse fluttered up and down the road like bold birds, clung convulsively to the windshields of cars for a moment and swooped off again.
The wind was tearing up the city, emptying the streets, stripping the trees, a crazy, confused wind that blew in all directions at once. Charlotte felt that she was a part of it, sharing its wild confusion. She didn’t know where Lewis was or how to find him. She didn’t even know if he was alive.
The moon leered through the leaves of the giant, oaks, veiled, provocative, like a half-told secret:
Is he alive? Perhaps, maybe. Where? Somewhere, here or there.
She had no hopes, no plans, but she had to start somewhere. She drove to the building where Lewis had his office. There was a light on the second floor behind the partly closed Venetian blinds. Lewis often worked at night and she had often waited for him, sitting in her car or standing in the entrance hall downstairs pretending to read the directory beside the elevator. H. M. Morris, Electrolysis. Salinda Rental Association. C. Charles Tomlinson, Broker. Ballard and Johnson, Attorneys…
The elevator was locked for the night. An elderly Negro with a white woolly cap of hair was mopping the tiled floor, mopping the same place over and over again, as if his thoughts were far away, dwelling on softer things than tile.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She knew he didn’t remember her. People walked in and walked out, traded names, traded faces, wore each other’s clothes—so many people they lost their identities in Tom’s mind, and he erased their footprint with his mop.
“Fine clear evening, ma’am,” Tom said. Though it rained, or the city was smothered with fog or mauled by a desert wind, the evenings were always fine and clear to Tom. He stayed inside, slept in the basement, and ate his meals sitting on an upright chair in the broom closet while he read the Bible, or at least held it open on his lap. (“He can’t read,” Lewis had told her once, in front of Tom. “But he’s very religious and he likes to pick out the words he knows, like God and heaven.” “God and heaven is fine words,” Tom said with dignity.)
“Tom…”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is—have you seen Mr. Ballard tonight?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t r’lect seeing him.”
“There’s a light in his office.”
“Might be. I didn’t r’lect to turn it off.”
“I’ll go up and see.”
“Elevator’s closed, ma’am. Have to walk up.”
“That’s all right, Tom.”
“Steps is wet, you walk easy.”
“I will.”
The corridor upstairs was dim, and smelled of soap and chlorine. The door to Lewis’ office was half open and she could see part of the reception room—the luxurious gold satin love seat and the tropical aquarium that had been built into the wall. The aquarium lights were on, and the miniature fish moved silently behind glass, striped angel fish and velvety black mollies and brilliant neons as tiny as tacks.
She knew, as soon as she saw that the aquarium lights were on, that it couldn’t be Lewis in the office. He paid no attention to the fish; they belonged to Vern Johnson who fed and fussed over them with the same care Miss Schiller gave her cat.
She rapped on the door and said, “Vern?”
“Who is it?”
“Charlotte.”
“Well, come in, come in, Charley.”
She went in and closed the door behind her. Vern Johnson was a big moon-faced man with thick horn-rimmed glasses that gave his face a false aspect of vagueness. She had known him for years, had gone to school with his sister, and turned down his somewhat boozy and brotherly proposals. It was at one of his parties that she had her first personal talk with Lewis, a week after Gwen had introduced him to her.
“You know, I asked Vern to invite you, Miss Keating
.”
She didn’t like the approach. She said distantly, “Did you?” “Yes. I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been planning for two days what I’d say but now I’ve forgotten all of it. The general idea, though, was to impress you with my mind.” “Why should you want to do that?
” “
Damned if I know, except that you look so competent and superior I’d like to show you that I’m competent and superior, too.” He spoke with a kind of rueful candor. “And are you, Mr. Ballard?
” “
I’ve always thought so.” She changed the subject, then, with deliberate abruptness. “Mrs. Ballard’s not with you tonight?
” “
No.” “I hope she’s not ill.” “No, she’s not ill.” He turned and walked away, and a little later Vern came and told her that Lewis had left. “What did you say to him, anyway
?” “
Why, nothing, nothing at all.” “He’s a hell of a good guy, Charley
.
Which is a miracle, considering his wife.”
“Sit down, Charley,” Vern said.
“Thanks.”
“Looking for Lewis?”
“I… Yes.”
“That makes three of us. Gwen’s been calling all day.”
She didn’t sit down. She said, “I won’t disturb you if you’re busy, Vern.”
“I’m not busy.” He picked up a small glass bowl from the table and held it up to the light. It contained a single black mollie, no more than an inch and a half long. “See this little lady? She doesn’t look much like it but she’s about to become a mother. The trouble is, her feeding instincts are considerably stronger than her maternal instincts, so I have to wait around and see that she doesn’t eat her offspring.”
“Vern —when did you see him last?”
“Three days ago.”
“Hasn’t he phoned?”
“Yesterday morning. He was drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Sounded like it.” He put the glass bowl back on the table, but he kept his eye on the mollie as he talked. “What gives with Lewis, anyway?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Won’t tell me.”
“Both.”
“Top secret, eh? My guess is that Gwen is kicking up a row because she’s found out about you and Lewis. Our Gwen isn’t as dumb as she looks. She’s nutty as a fruitcake, but she’s not one hundred percent dumb.”
“She hasn’t found out. This has nothing to do with Gwen. It’s more—serious.”
“I see.”
“Vern, when he phoned did he tell you where he was?”
“No. All I know is that it was a local call and that he wasn’t phoning from a booth. There was a lot of noise in the background, people talking and dishes rattling, and the sound of a cash register. He must have been in some café or bar where they had no private phone booth.”
“Didn’t you ask him where he was?”
“Certainly. He didn’t answer. Apparently he’d had some land of quarrel with Gwen, because he asked me to call her up and tell her he was sorry but not to try and find him. I called her, but by that time she’d already phoned the police. Gwen has a pretty talent for doing the wrong thing.”
The mollie dropped her first offspring. It looked like a quarter of an inch of narrow black velvet ribbon, but it was alive and it was complete. It began immediately to swim around the bowl, as indifferent to its mother as she was to it; spending its first moment of life as it would spend its last—in the pursuit of food.
Vern’s face was excited. “Well, here we go again. By God, isn’t he a cute little fellow? You know, last time she had twenty-two of them. It took her over four hours.”
She looked at the mollie who had just demonstrated with the bored ease of an expert the miracle of birth. She thought of a human baby, itself a fish, but helpless, boneless, blind and deaf and fed through a cord—its growth slow; its birth cruel. And between the two violences, the shock of birth and the shock of death, its life was incalculable.
The mollie spotted her offspring, circled it, and lost interest because she had already eaten.
“Charley,” Vern said.
She looked up at him, wearily.
“Charley, for nearly a year, off and on, I’ve been thinking that I should apologize to you.”
“Why?”
“I guess I shouldn’t have fooled around playing cupid. Remember the first night you met Lewis at my house?”