“I’m coming along,” Charlotte said.
“What for?”
“Because I want to. Because…”
“Haven’t you gotten into enough of a mess already?” he said. “Look. You can’t deal with a crummy gang like that. You’re sensitive, you’re a woman. You ascribe to these people feelings and thoughts and morals they don’t have. You’ve fallen among thieves, Charley, and you’re a nice, gentle girl for all your knowledge.”
“I’m coming along, she repeated.
“Stubborn, aren’t you?”
“A little. I have to be.”
“Why do you want to come along? Don’t you trust me?”
She hesitated briefly before she answered. “I don’t trust your temper, your mood.”
“I see. You think the situation is going to call for a woman’s soothing influence.”
“Perhaps. Why should that make you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“You are… Did you have a quarrel with Gwen?”
“Gwen doesn’t quarrel,” he said heavily. “She sits around looking, very, very pained,”
“I saw her this afternoon.”
“She told me.”
“I can’t go on treating her any more,” Charlotte said. “Get me out of it, Lewis.”
“How?”
“That’s absurd,” he said. “I refuse.”
They walked back towards the café in strained silence, Charlotte keeping a little ahead of him, her step firm and stubborn.
He put her in her car. “I suppose there’s no use reasoning with you? You’re coming?”
“Yes, I am. Don’t you see, perhaps I can help, perhaps I can…”
“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. All right, I won’t argue.” He closed the door or the car. “I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”
“It won’t take that long, will it? It’s only on Olive Street.”
“I have to stop at my office. I have some business to attend to first.”
“At this time of night?”
“Yes. It’s something Vern asked me to look after and I forgot about it.” Vern Johnston was his partner in the law firm. “He wanted me to put some more food in the aquarium.”
“I see.” She knew he was lying; Vern would never dream of letting anyone else feed his precious fish.
“Meet me in twenty minutes, then.”
“All right.”
“And park on Junipero Street ” he said. “There’s no point in advertising our visit.”
He stood for a minute looking down at her through the open window, his head bent. She thought he was going to kiss her. She wanted him to. Instead, he turned suddenly and walked back to his car.
On Olive Street the adolescent Vosses and Eddies flocked sheeplike in front of the bars and poolrooms, crept singly down alleys like hungry cats, pressed together for love or warmth like rabbits in the dark between the walls of shacks.
But the people on Olive Street were not animals, as Lewis seemed to think. Charlotte had made calls among them by day and night, and knew them. They’re people like myself, she thought, only they haven’t had my luck, so I owe them something. I owe them tolerance, understanding and even faith. Faith in Voss and his wife, in Eddie? No, no, it was too late. They were already too crippled for therapy; the damage was done, the muscles atrophied, the nerves degenerated.
She turned off on Junipero Street and parked in front of a brown wooden cabin. There were no blinds on the windows and she could see the family inside—a withered little Mexican woman ironing, and a young couple dancing without music, oblivious to the woman and the ironing board, the girl lean and lithe, the boy with his hair worn long and parted sleekly in the middle all the way to the nape of his neck.
Lewis’ blue Cadillac slid up behind her, looking as conspicuous in that neighborhood as the little Mexican would look at the opera with her ironing board. Charlotte stepped out of her car and they came together on the broken sidewalk.
“Did you—feed the fish?”
“Fish? No.” He avoided her eyes. “Vern was there. He stopped by to check up on one of the black mollies. He thinks she’s pregnant.”
Bubbles of laughter rose suddenly in her throat and stung her eyes to tears. She clung weakly to his arm and pressed her face against the sleeve of his coat “What’s so funny, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Vern fussing over a pregnant fish… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I laughed.”
“Here.” He gave her a handkerchief. “Wipe your eyes. You weren’t laughing.”
“I was. I was laughing.”
“I don’t think so.” They were talking in whispers, as if Voss might be in ambush behind a tree, or hidden in the trunk of one of the cars, listening. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, then.”
He held her arm as they crossed the street.
Except for a square of flickering light in the attic, Voss’s house was dark, a corrupt monster with one dying eye. The porch smelled of wet wood, and where the warped planks slipped towards the center there was a small puddle of water. Within the past hour someone had hosed down the porch and it hadn’t had time to dry. Charlotte leaned over the railing. The hose had been flung into a pyracantha bush and it was still connected, still dripping water through the tiny thorny leaves. Someone (Voss?) had washed the porch in a hurry and then run away or gone into the house to hide in the dark.
No one answered Lewis’ knock. He rapped again and waited, jabbing his hands nervously in and out of his pockets.
“Lewis…”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got a gun in your pocket.”
“Are you surprised?”
“Very,” she said in a whisper. “Very surprised.”
“I carry it to improve my morale.” He rapped on the door again. “Sometimes it sags.”
“Lewis, don’t threaten these men, it wouldn’t work. Voss is a psychopath, he’s dangerous when he’s cornered or frightened or feeling inferior…”
“All right, I’ll tell him what a hell of a fine fellow he is, then I’ll hand him three hundred dollars as a slight token of my esteem.”
“I hate guns,” she said passionately. “I hate violence.”
He turned away with a little shrug of his shoulders. “Go ahead and hate it, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”
A long, lean, gray cat appeared out of the shadows and swaggered along the splintered railing of the porch waving his tail contemptuously. Charlotte reached out her hand to stroke him. He spat at her and leaped off the railing, vanishing in a spidery tangle of geraniums.
“This is a waste of time,” Lewis said. “No one’s home.”
“We could try the back door.”
“Why bother, if nobody’s here?”
“There’s a light in the attic, and other people live here besides Voss and Eddie—the old Italian that I told you about. Probably others too. It’s supposed to be a rooming house.”
“God,” Lewis said.
Charlotte’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see quite distinctly as she went down the porch steps and around to the side of the house. Here, the stench of decaying garbage fought and overpowered the fragrance of night-scented jasmine.
The path that led to the back yard was tangled with weeds and littered with rubbish. It was as if every roomer and tenant and owner who had ever lived in the house had flung his debris haphazardly out of doors and windows. There were piles of newspapers and empty bottles and rusted foul-smelling cans; a legless chair, two tarnished picture frames lying across the corroded springs of a bed, an old automobile headlight with the glass shattered, and an abandoned wardrobe, its cardboard belly bulging with age. There were even evidences of children; the frame of a box kite, a doll—the glass eyes sunk into its head as if pushed by exploring, curious fingers—and a wicker baby carriage with the front wheels gone, so that it seemed to be down on its knees praying.
All the broken, useless things, the scraps and parings and rinds of living.
“God,” Lewis said again. “Have you had enough?”
“I—guess so.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“All right.”
She turned to go back, and in turning, she looked up at the window in the attic with its flickering light. A woman’s face was pressed against the pane, contorted, weirdly white and luminescent like a fish in the blue-black depths of the sea.
There was a sudden smash of glass, followed by a series of silvery tinkles as the fragments struck the roof of the porch.
The woman began to scream. “Help, help! Let me out of here, let me out!”
“Were coming,” Charlotte answered. “It’s all right, Mrs. Voss, stop screaming.”
“Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”
Two boys passing on the street turned their heads briefly and then walked on. Screaming women were common on Olive Street; the boys knew better than to interfere, to be around if and when the police arrived.
The back door of the house was half open. Lewis went in ahead, fumbling his way along the wall until he found the switch and turned on the lights. The kitchen table bore evidences of a drinking-party—three empty bottles of muscatel and four smudged glasses and half a bag of potato chips. A number of potato chips were scattered over the floor as if someone had become drunkenly playful and started throwing them around like confetti. The table and the drain-board of the sink were silvered with cockroaches.
Mrs. Voss’s screams continued, muted by the massive old walls.
The attic was four flights up. At some time it had been partitioned to serve as a separate apartment; Mrs. Voss was locked in the tiny room that had once been the kitchen. The key was in the lock, turned sideways so that Mrs. Voss couldn’t push it out with a hairpin and maneuver it through the crack at the bottom of the door.
Charlotte opened the door. Mrs. Voss stopped in the middle of a scream, her mouth gaping, both hands clutching at her throat. She was sitting on the floor with her legs sprawled out in front of her. Her skirt was slit to the hip where she’d torn at it in her frenzy. A little red Christmas candle was burning in one corner of the room—the light bulb had been removed from the ceiling months or years ago, and tiny house spiders lived like kings in the empty socket.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it!” Mrs. Voss shrieked. “I didn’t have nothing to do with anything! I didn’t even hear nothing, I didn’t, I didn’t!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Charlotte said. “Of…”
“They wouldn’t let me go along, they wouldn’t take me, they locked me here to die!” She began beating the floor with her fists and shaking her head back and forth. The candle flame flickered, leaning away as if in fright. “They said I talked too much, I can’t keep my mouth shut. They said I got hysterical alla time. Me, me, me, hysterical!” She drew a long shuddering breath. “They wouldn’t take me along.”
“I can’t understand you when you shout like that,” Charlotte said softly. “No one’s going to hurt you. Take it easy.”
“They said I got hysterical alla time. I don’t, I don’t! I never did!”
“Easy now.” She turned to Lewis who had remained outside the door. “There’s some brandy in my car. Would you get it?”
“And leave you here alone with…”
“Of course. Mrs. Voss realizes that I’m her friend, I’m going to help her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Voss sobbed. “Yes, yes! You’re my friend! You’re my friend!”
Tears spurted out of her eyes as if something had suddenly smashed inside her. Charlotte knelt down and put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. She could hear Lewis going down the stairs, very swiftly, as if he was glad to get away.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it, I didn’t.” She dabbed her eyes with the hem of her torn skirt. Even after all her shouting and weeping, her face was still white. “They can’t put me in jail. I’d die if I was put in jail. I’m sick anyways, I’m sick.”
“I know.”
“You can see in my face I’m sick. Maybe I’m going to die, anyways.”
“That’s nonsense. You need some good, nourishing food, and a nice rest in the hospital.”
“No, no, I’m scared of hospitals. I never been in one.”
“That’s why you’re scared… Here, hold onto my arm and well go downstairs.”
Mrs. Voss was still breathing heavily and rapidly, but she was no longer hysterical. She had enough presence of mind to remind Charlotte to blow out the candle before they went downstairs.
In the huge barren living room Mrs. Voss lay down on the couch and Charlotte took off her coat and wrapped it around Mrs. Voss’s legs.
“What happened that you had nothing to do with?” she asked.
“I don’t know nothing.”
“Yes, you do. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me anything.”
“They was fighting, they was all arguing down in the kitchen after I went upstairs.”
“Who was?”
“Eddie and Clarence and the old man.”
“Tiddles?”
“Yes, Tiddles.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“A purse. Something about a purse.”
Lewis returned with the brandy and Charlotte mixed an ounce of it in half a tumbler of water. She wasn’t sure what effect brandy would have on Mrs. Voss; too much, undiluted, might send her back into hysterics.
“They were arguing,” Charlotte said, “and then what?”
Mrs. Voss began to cry again, softly, exhaustedly. “Oh, I can’t tell. I don’t know.”
“Something happened.”
“I think—I think Tiddles—died.”
“Do you mean they killed him?”
“No—oh, I don’t know. I didn’t see. I just know there was blood, a lot of blood. I heard Eddie on the porch talking about it, he’s ascared of blood. He kept saying they got to wash it off. I started to come downstairs to see what’d happened, only Clarence saw me. That’s when they took me up to the attic and locked me in. They wouldn’t take me along, they said I couldn’t keep my tonsils from flapping. ‘Good-bye, sweetheart,’ Clarence says, ‘good-bye sweetheart, it’s been hell knowing you.’ ” She turned her face away and pressed it against the brown mohair upholstery to hide her shame and humiliation.
Lewis had gone out into the hall again. Charlotte could hear him walking around on the creaking floor, walking and walking, like a man exploring the possibilities of escape from a cell.
Charlotte said, “What makes you think Tiddles is dead?”
“The quiet. They was all arguing in the kitchen first, afterwards on the porch. And then suddenly there
was a quiet, a long, dead quiet before Eddie started to talk about the blood and washing it off with a hose. That’s when I started to come downstairs and Clarence heard me. ‘Something has come up,’ he says, ‘Eddie and me are going on a little trip.’ ”