The Stand-In (16 page)

The doorman smiled and she smiled back at him, seeing in her head the route they had showed her on a map. (She had it marked out in Coral's brown alligator purse, because Coral was scared she would forget where she had to meet them. Coral might forget, but she wouldn't.) “Thank you,” she said to the man. He saluted. Saluted!

“Is Millie gone?” Bran asked, rushing in.

He did care. He hadn't just walked out; she was a louse to have thought that. “Yes, darling. She just left.” But when he was closer to her, she saw that his eyes didn't match his expression.

“My trench coat is in the Ferrari!”

“You came back for your
trench coat?
You're going out
again?
Bran, you can't leave me alone again!”

“Excuse me, please.”

Only his words were polite. His eyes frightened her because they were so much somewhere else and he was going out. He had taken another coat out of the closet and was folding it over his arm. What did he want with a coat when it was so warm? Where was he going? “Bran, what business can be more important than this?”

“I'm parked right outside,” he told her. “I said I'd only be a minute.”

16

When Desmond saw the red Ferrari moving very slowly, he stepped out to the curb and said, “Come on, come on,” because it was so damned slow.

The window was already rolled down and a B.O.A.C. flight bag was thrust through it, but he shoved that aside and opened the car door, picked up Kitten, and set her on the seat. Coral Reid didn't say a thing, not that he wanted her to, but in the time it took to shove the kid in and close the car door again she was like a statue holding out that B.O.A.C. bag.

He turned and walked slowly up the street because he didn't know where else to go. He was so damned tired. He had left Ronnie's car with the key in it at the St. Pancras underground station because he had felt too sick to drive, so he and the kid had come by Underground and then (he got off at the wrong station) by cab. But they had made it by four and now he didn't have to do anything, not a thing. He noticed a house with steps and sat and leaned his head against the iron rails, closing his eyes, feeling the sun-warmed metal.

He didn't know who was talking to him, who was saying, “Take it! Why don't you take it, nurse?”

Millie stamped her foot. She wanted Bran and Coral at least to pay the lousy money.

He opened his eyes and saw that the reason he hadn't recognized the voice was because this wasn't Coral Reid. This was, he saw now, someone dressed and made up to look like Coral Reid, a professional job, too. They'd sent out a reasonable facsimile, so even if his original plan had gone through, he would only have had a ringer. He never would have had a chance to prove he was a man to Coral Reid. He closed his eyes again and felt something on his thighs. It was the flight bag with the “reasonable sum,” the reasonable facsimile of the fifty thousand pounds ransom money.

“Take it. Kitten's safe. I locked her in the car. Please take it!” She gave it a push. “I want you to know something. I'm not going to let them go to the cops, do you hear me? When I come back with Kitten, they'll want me to but I won't do it, do you hear? I swear I won't, and I'm the mother, so they can't do a thing. It will be up to me. You didn't hurt Kitten and I'm her mother.”

She was waiting for something so he made his head go up and down.

“Take the money and tell the others there'll be no cops.”

“Thanks,” he said, so she wouldn't stand there. He couldn't be bothered using the old voice. Anyhow, the kid would remember.

“You're a man! But I talked to you in the tent. We talked about your taking Kitten—but you're a man!”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. I won't tell them you're a man, either. I swear.”

“Thanks. Get going, huh?” He closed his eyes and heard her running back to the Ferrari and opening and shutting the door. Finally the car started up. Desmond moved so that he leaned more comfortably against the railing and then, it seemed only a few minutes but probably was much longer, she was back again, pulling at Daph's cape. Talking again.

“Get in, get in, get in!”

“Get in what?” She meant get in the Ferrari, which was at the curb again. “What for?”

“Please. Please!”

Okay, she could drive him. Bending into the Ferrari, he saw that the kid was now in the back, lying down wrapped in a raincoat.

“Kitten, close your eyes and say your alphabet five times. A—B—C—Close your eyes, Kitten.” She whispered, “That usually puts her to sleep.”

He had closed his eyes, too, but she pinched his thigh through Daph's skirt to wake him up.

“Kitten just told me! The whole thing—about hitting—wait a minute, what's his name—Ronnie! About hitting Ronnie with the milk bottle and how he fell down the stairs and he was dead, Kitten said. These kids see all this violence on TV. Is he really dead?”

Desmond yawned and nodded.

“Don't tell me any more about it. Don't incriminate yourself. Don't tell me a
thing
. You killed him to save my baby! That's only a guess, Kitten doesn't know that part, but it's the only thing that makes sense. But Kitten saw what you did; she was a witness, I mean, and Kitten can talk. You knew that, but you brought her here anyhow!”

“I brought her. You're holding up traffic.”

“Oh, I mustn't—nobody must notice!” She started the car inexpertly. “I drive a 1966 Rambler at home.” She drove silently for a few minutes. “This is it: You brought Kitten here but it wasn't because you wanted the lousy money. You didn't kill this man to get the money for yourself because you didn't even take it. You killed him because you wanted to save Kitten's life. He must have wanted to kill her so she wouldn't talk. He decided, since you only had Kitten and not Cornie, the risk was too great to let Kitten back alive. I owe my baby's life to you. You're laughing? Why? What's funny? She's here. You're here!”

“Here like hero. I'm no hero. Boy, what a hero!”

“To me you are. Stop that laughing! I want to help you.”

“You can't help me.”

“Why? Kitten was telling me how you dusted the house. She thought it was dusting, but of course you must have been getting rid of fingerprints. If you did that, you must have thought you had a chance. Why don't you think so now? I want to help.”

“Stop wanting to help me. I took her, didn't I? You're forgetting I took her in the first place.”

But Millie had a feeling (and she was only
feeling)
that Kitten had been kidnapped because she was supposed to be Cornie, therefore it was Bran's fault, her sister's fault, Mr. Ossian's fault, and not this man's.

“Anyhow, skip it. I told you ten times already you can't help me.”

“I can. I told you. Kitten isn't going to say a word. We're going to take the first plane home. I'll say that after this, they can't pay me enough to let her stay in the picture.” She remembered Alec Agathon tearing the contract across and across. The contract, all that, had only been a dream. “They can sue me until they're blue in the face. I haven't got anything to sue.”

She began talking very fast, jumping from one thing to another, but the only thing she carefully jumped over was Ronnie's body. His dead body that was lying at the bottom of the stairs. Did she think Scotland Yard was going to let her keep them from finding a murderer for Ronnie? An eye for an eye, a murderer for a murder.

“You've got to stay awake! I can't do it by myself.”

Had he dropped off again? The wonderful purr of the Ferrari, even the jerky way she handled it, made him sleepy.
“I can't do it by myself.”
Desmond rubbed his eyes, feeling the mascara. “You can't do it,
period!
There's a dead man in that house in Stoke Newington, and tomorrow when they go there to shoot the picture—this happens to be the house they rented to shoot
Peepshow
in. Don't ask me how I got there! It's a long story and I'm tired.”

“Alright, I won't. Just listen, that's all. You got rid of all signs you were there, right, and I have the only witness, right? That's all I'm saying.”

“And I'm saying you can't hide one dead man, or one killer.”

“There are thousands of killers who aren't found! I read about that—thousands!”

“Forget it.” Her voice had become pretty loud. “You're going to wake your kid. You think about your kid.” But she wouldn't think about her kid. Where did he live, where did he live, where did he live, she kept asking him. She kept saying it was important where he lived, because he had to get out of the nurse's uniform. The one fact everyone knew was that a hospital nurse had taken Kitten.

She was a real nagger: Where did he live? Where could he get into his own clothes? He wondered how her husband could stand her. The uniform, he told her, belonged to a nurse friend of his who was out of London.

Then Desmond realized that this was one more thing he ought to do if he could, just one more. If he could get Daph's stuff back and his own things out of her place so that old Daph didn't get mixed up with this mess, he should. So he told this nagger that if she dropped him at Daph's place he could put Daph's stuff back and get into his.

“And then the nurse who took Kitten won't exist. No such person!”

She thought her idea of saving him was making an impression at last, and he was too tired to contradict her. (Ronnie's blood was turning black.) Then, just when they got in sight of Daph's place, she speeded up and went by it. Didn't he realize that he mustn't be seen going into Daph's place as a nurse?

She began giving him orders,
snap, snap, snap
. Take off Daph's wig. There should be a box of tissues in the glove compartment or in the side pocket of the door. Open the glove compartment. Tissues? Swell. Take some and wipe the gook off his face, all he could get off. Was it off? Let her see. Yes, enough was off. Luckily, Bran's trench coat was in the car. She had put it over Kitten because it was turning cool.

She twisted her head to make sure the kid was still asleep and made him take the wheel while she lifted off the trench coat as if, even in sleep, the kid would know her touch.

“Sh, sh, Kitten.”

She gave him the coat and then told him to take off the white shoes and stockings. (He remembered Ronnie telling him this, and his gut twisted.) There must be, she said, no flash of white.

And how about his bare feet?

“Well, if anyone noticed, they'd think he was a hippy, but not a nurse, that was the main thing.

But Ronnie's body was in the house. You couldn't get the woman to listen to anything about Ronnie's body. One thing at a time, she said. First they had to return Daph's uniform and then go back to his place. (She nagged his address out of him, too.) She made him look in the glove compartment again, and when he found a pencil and notebook, she made him write it down, plus his phone number. “What for? What the hell for?”

One thing at a time, she said again. She wouldn't drive him right up to Daph's house because someone might notice the red Ferrari. Was one shoe in each pocket of the trench coat? Was the wig stuffed in his—
neck
, his neck where it couldn't fall out? Was his hair matted down by the wig? Run his fingers through it. She stopped the car a block away and gave him the once-over as if he was her kid. Now what?

She was pulling off fake eyelashes and
her
wig and fluffing out
her
matted hair. (They were meant for each other.) Now
she
took a handful of tissues and was going to scrub at her face, then didn't, explaining that without the wig and lashes she wouldn't look like Coral, but if she tried getting all that stuff off she'd look so weird people would surely notice. She rubbed her forehead.

“He shaved off my eyebrows.”

“They'll grow in.”

“You think I care about my eyebrows? I care about my child. You saved my child. I care about you, not eyebrows!”

He opened the door, but she grabbed him because there was still one more thing. Would he promise not to do anything?

“Not do what?”

“Confess or run away. If you run away, you might make someone suspicious. I mean,
why—?
Before you go, you've got to promise that you'll go on as if nothing happened.”

“You're nuts, you know that?”

“No. You've got to promise me!”

What a nut! A killer, a kidnapper, a man who passed for a woman, for Christ's sake, and she was asking him to promise the same way she probably asked her kid not to take candy from strangers. “I promise,” he said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“It's not funny!”

“No.”

“I promise to do everything to help you. You think they'll find you, well, I don't, but suppose the worst comes to the worst—well, I'll help you then, too. Yes, I will! Then I'd tell them why you killed him!”

All the court scenes in movies, Perry Mason all over the place, and this fool woman didn't know she hadn't a leg to stand on. Tell them why he did it? She hadn't even been there!

Of course the kid could testify. The kid could testify that he'd killed Ronnie for nothing, that he'd been the world's biggest fool. As he stood there letting her talk, he knew that being shown up as the world's biggest fool would be the worst, the worst.

She ran down. “Remember, you promised!” She pushed in a piece of Daph's cape that was sticking out between two buttons of the trench coat. “I'm going to help you.”

“And you can do it! Sure you can, all you have to do is bring a guy back to life and you have it made!”

“Please, please—Oh, I can't think now. Don't you see that? I can't think now.”

Give her time. This was another I.B.M.,
click, click
. Press the right buttons, and this little I.B.M. would push out a miracle. He looked at her and saw she was crying. She knew the score, she wasn't that dumb. He said, “I promise I'll stay put, okay? I promise. Now you promise, too. Don't come near my place. If you really want to help, keep away. Look, if they find out, if they get me, then you can rally round, but until then you have to keep away. You promise me that?”