Suspended Sentences (12 page)

Tomorrow, she resolved, she'd start making phone calls. Even if it made her look like some sort of shameless wanton.

She fell asleep filled with determination; she awoke filled with the harsh scent of smoke. She couldn't place it at first but then she coughed and tried to breathe and coughed again, choking.

The apartment was on fire.

The red glow flickered through the living room doorway. She leaped out of the bed, flung the window open, and climbed out onto the narrow ledge. It was merely a decorative brick escarpment but it gave her purchase for her bare feet; she held onto the window sill and yelled for help.

It was only a one-story drop and finally, when the heat and smoke got too much for her, she jumped to the lawn below, managing to hit the grass without breaking anything. The fire engines were just arriving — she heard the sirens and saw the lights and then it was all a welter of men and machines and hoses and terrible smells.

By morning half of the building was gutted but the fire was out, and she was taken, along with a dozen other displaced tenants, to City Medical to make sure there were no serious injuries.

The fire apparently had started in the furnace room immediately below her apartment and had come up the air ducts, spreading through the building; the hottest part of it had attacked her apartment and it was there that the worst damage had been done, both by the fire and by the tons of water that had been used to extinguish it. The superintendent was a skinny little Italian man with sad compassionate eyes who kept shaking his head back and forth like a metronome. “I'm sorry but it's a total loss. You'll want to get in touch with the owner about the insurance, of course, but I doubt that will cover your own personal things. Were you insured?”

“No.”

“Too bad, Miss. I am very sorry. If there's anything at all I can do —”

“You've been very kind. I think I want to sleep a while.” He went, and she thought vaguely, in song-like rhythm,
Sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry…

She took a room in a residential hotel. Furnished. With daily linen and maid service. She bought a few clothes, enough to get by. She thought of moving to some other city.

Charles seemed very distant. He lent her money but not a shoulder to cry on; she could understand that but she
needed
a shoulder and resented his not providing one. All he said was, “Try not to persuade yourself that Murdoch set the fire. If he didn't, you'd be making an unjust accusation. If he did, you'll never prove it. Either way it's no good torturing yourself.”

She was walking home from a solitary supper trip to the delicatessen when a car came up on the curb behind her at high speed. She heard it — she'd always had acute hearing — and dived flat against the display window of a furniture store, and the car swished past her, inches away. It was a shadowed place in the middle of the block and the car wasn't running with any lights on, but she saw its silhouette vaguely in the darkness as it roared off and it looked like an old car. An old station wagon, with tailfins.

It had damned near killed her. She had that thought and then she crumpled and sat on the pavement for quite a while before she regained strength enough to walk.

Go to the police? And tell them what?

Call Charles? No, he's got other things on his mind now.

Move away. Nothing to hold her here anymore. No real ties here. Go away. California maybe. Back to Illinois. New York. What difference did it make? Just get away from that madman.

That was it, then. Run. Run away.

And let him think he's won?

She watched him get out of the old station wagon, lock it, put a cigarette in his mouth and light up. Then he turned and began to walk across the wide parking lot toward the low square stucco building that housed his realty office.

She let him get halfway across the parking lot. Right Out in the open. Then she put her car in gear.

“Sorry, Murdoch,” she muttered. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was an accident. I just couldn't help it. I'm sorry.”

And she ran him down.

THE
SHOPPING LIST

“
The Shopping List” was written out of a simple desire to write a detective story
—
red herrings, clues, solving a mystery puzzle, building to a surprise ending, all that. I rarely try to construct such plots; call it laziness if you like. The story was written to satisfy a curiosity. If it fools you, it worked
.

It was awkward. She wouldn't tell him the truth, obviously, but she'd always had trouble lying.

He phoned, as she'd known he would, on Tuesday afternoon. “I'll be out of town on business until Friday. Not sure what time I'll get back — don't count on me for Friday dinner. But I'll get tickets for that play Saturday night —”

Marie closed her eyes. “Oh, Severn, I'm sorry, I just can't make it Saturday.”

There was a moment's silence but then his deep reassuring voice rumbled down the line: “Sunday, then. I'll get tickets.”

“Sunday's fine.” She closed her eyes in relief. He really was marvelous. He took her on faith — no questions, no protestations. She said softly into the phone, “I don't know if I can wait that long to see you. I do love you, darling — and I'm sorry about Saturday.”

“See you Sunday then. Around six, so we can have dinner first. Love you, honey.” Then he was gone and she cradled the phone, but her hand remained on it as if to prolong the thread of contact.

After a while she bestirred herself. She went through the apartment to the foyer and rummaged in her handbag for the list.

The handbag was on the sconce below the oval mirror and she examined her reflection briefly and wondered what Severn could possibly see in her: plump plain Marie, dark brown hair she never could do anything with, creases here and there that presaged the looming fortieth birthday — not a whole lot to draw the attraction of a man like Severn. He was thirty-five and successful; he'd been divorced for several years. When she'd asked him why on earth he wanted to keep seeing her, he'd only said, “You're comfortable, love. I've had my fill of abrasive ambitious women.”

His ex-wife, she'd gathered, was a beautiful but brittle careerist — some sort of talent agent or casting director; Marie wasn't sure — Severn rarely talked about her. “It wasn't really a marriage. We both backed into it, trying to get out of things.”

Marie looked away. At first, after her mother had died and she'd moved into this apartment, she'd meant to take down the mirror from the foyer wall — she didn't like mirrors; they only reminded her of her unattractiveness. But occasionally Aunt Leah and Uncle Arthur would come around to dinner or one of the office girls would give her a lift home and stay for a drink — mainly, Marie thought, because most of the office girls lived out in the Valley or down in Orange County and it was easier to have a drink at Marie's while the Freeway traffic thinned out before driving home — and guests always liked to have a mirror by the front door so they could make sure their faces were on before they ventured out onto the Beverly Hills sidewalks.

She found the list in her handbag and studied it. She never remembered to do things unless she wrote them down. Severn kidded her about it.

She'd miss him desperately in his absence for the next few days; but in a way she was grateful for it. She'd be able to get everything done and she wouldn't have to tell lies to Severn to explain why she was going to be out so much this week.

A few of the items had already been checked off — she'd taken care of them ten days ago during Severn's last business trip out of town; but there was still a great deal to do.

1.   
Toy gun. Must look real. Revolver type
.

2.   
Suitcases (2)
.

3.   
Clothes. Ned's suit size 44 short. Shirts 16 neck, 33 sleeve. Waist 38, inseam29. Shoes 10 1/2-C. Socks, shorts, etc. Remember Ned prefers brown, doesn't like blue
.

4.   
Car. Can be old but must run well
.

5.   
Make airline reservation: San Diego to Mexico City for late Monday afternoon Feb. 18th, in name of Arnold Creber
.

7.   
Sunglasses. Reflector Type
.

8.   
Blond wig, man's. Ned's bat size is 7 1/4
.

9.   
Ned arrives LAX Feb 16th, 730p.m. Take suitcases, etc. Leave envelope at Delta information desk
.

10.   
Make reservation in Creber name at a Burbank motel, Feb. 16th & 17th
.

She'd taken care of all the easy things on the list and left the difficult ones for last. Tomorrow on the lunch hour she'd take care of the toy gun. Then Thursday she'd have to take a sick day and visit the used-Car lots.

She hated all of it. It was complicity — she'd be a criminal. But it was the price Ned had exacted from her. The insurance hadn't come anywhere near covering all the expenses of Mom's last illness and Ned had been despicably, and typically, cold-hearted about it. “Let her die and get it over with. Pull the plug — let her go.”

“Ned!” She'd been astonished, shocked. “She's
your
mother too, you know.”

“She's a dying old woman. Making a few doctors rich won't change that.” Then he'd given her that quick easy selfish smile. “I'll make you a deal, sister. You want to lavish money on the old woman, fine. I'll let you have the money. But I want a
quid pro quo
. You've got to do a few things for me. Now get out your notebook and let's see you make one of those lists of yours. First I'm going to want a toy gun…”

That had been a year ago, at the prison in Atlanta. She'd only visited him once more after that, to tell him about the funeral and ask him when he expected to be released on parole. She'd left quickly, unable to face his indifference to Mom's death.

Now he was getting out, just as he'd planned, and she had to keep her part of the bargain. But it would be all right. After Monday he'd be far away in some distant part of the world and she'd never have to see, or even think about, her brother again.

Thurston found a parking space just off McDonough Boulevard and walked to the entrance gate. The long gray building had a forbidding institutional massiveness. Only a discreet plaque identified it: Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The “Big A.”

Thurston was expected. His credentials got him in. A guard escorted him to a small outer office where he waited a few minutes with a magazine before he was admitted to the Deputy Warden's sanctum.

The Deputy Warden was a large man with a bushy sand-colored mustache and a beer gut and the plaid-shirt look of Good Ole Boy who spent his free days hunting with coon hounds and swapping lies in roadhouse taverns.

“Well, now, Mr. Thurston, they didn't tell me exactly what you want down here but we be happy to oblige you if we can. Now you represent the insurance company, that right?” He pronounced “right” as if it were “rat” and put heavy emphasis on the first syllable of “insurance.”

Thurston said, “I work for a private-investigation company. But we're under contract to the insurance people, yes. Indirectly I work for the insurance company. We're still hoping to recover the bonds that Marks stole.”

“I can see where they might be just a little bit interested in something like that. They had to pay off the claim in full, I expect?”

“In full,” Thurston agreed drily. “We didn't recover any of it.”

“But I thought Marks confessed?”

“He did.”

The Deputy Warden glanced through a stapled sheaf of papers — possibly the file on Edward “Ned” Marks. “They were bearer bonds, I see. No registered owners, no signatures. Even if you get 'em back, how're you fixin' to identify them?”

“They've got serial numbers.”

“Well,” the Deputy Warden said, “he's behaved himself here, kept mostly out of trouble, served easy time. Stays out of most folks' way. I haven't had much contact with him. No occasion to. The ones I see are mostly the troublemakers. So there's not a whole lot I can tell you about him.”

The Deputy Warden cocked his head over on one side. “You know, that's a pretty fair rate of pay — seven hundred thousand dollars for twenty-eight months easy time. Works out to about twenty-five thousand a month, doesn't it. Good pay, yessirreebob. If he gets to keep it.” The eyes narrowed into a shrewd smile. “You're fixin' to see he doesn't get to keep it.”

Thurston said, “Well, I'm fixing to try. He's due for release tomorrow morning. I'd appreciate it if you'd point him out to me but not let him see me. I've seen his photographs But they're a few years old and I'd rather have him identified for me in the flesh, just so there's no possibility of a mistake.”

“And then you aim to shadow him when he leaves here, that it?”

“Every step of the way.”

Thurston sat in the car in a No Parking zone —“Violators will be towed away”— with art angle of view on the Big A. It looked rather like the Reichstag from this angle — the old one, he thought; the one Hitler had burned down in '33. Thurston took an interest in history, particularly the kind that was told photographically. He had a growing collection of rare old plates
—
even a few Matthew Brady originals. It was the sort of thing you did when you lived alone, and Thurston preferred to live alone.

He wasn't antisocial. But he'd learned there wasn't anybody whose face he wanted to look at every night and every morning — or at least he'd thought so until recently.

There was one daughter, now thirteen, the souvenir of his youthful romantic illusion, but she was confined to a home for the severely retarded. She didn't recognize him on his infrequent visits, so he didn't feel he had any real ties. He read books, collected his photographic history, played poker quite often, enjoyed his own simple cooking, worked out three times a week in a health club, dated several women most of whom were divorcees; but lately he'd been seeing more of one woman than of the others.