A Touch of Death (21 page)

How long before you broke?

After a while she went to bed.

I made a pot of coffee and watched the hours crawl around the face of the electric clock on the bookshelf. I began to imagine I could hear it. It made a tiny snoring sound. The ashtray filled up with butts. The room was blue with drifting layers of smoke.

I would sit still until my nerves were screaming; then I would walk the floor. Three or four times I heard sirens crying somewhere in the city and each time the breath would stop in my throat in spite of the fact that I knew if they came they wouldn’t be using sirens. On a thing like this they came quietly, covered the front and rear exits, and two of them came up and knocked on the door.

It was the elevator that was terrible. The apartment was only two doors away from it and I could hear it, very faintly, if it stopped on this floor and the doors opened. I began to catch myself listening for it. I held my breath listening for it. I imagined I heard it.

Then I would hear it, really hear it, the doors opening softly as it stopped. I waited for the footsteps.

There were never any footsteps because the hall was deeply carpeted. The elevator doors opened and then there was only silence, silence that went up and up,

increasing, like a scream.

Which way had they gone?

I waited, counting.

Was it twelve steps? Fifteen? I waited, not even able to breathe now with the pressure building up in my chest, my nerves pulling tighter and tighter, waiting for the knock on the door.

Ten...eleven...fourteen...seventeen...twenty...

They had gone the other way. Or gone on by.
I would be weak and drenched with sweat, a cigarette

burning my fingers.

I would relax a little.

Then I would begin listening for the elevator to stop

again.

It was morning.

It was Friday morning. This was our last chance until Monday. The banks here were closed all day Saturday in summer.

She came down the hall from the bedroom. She was wearing the blouse and skirt again, and her hair was out of the curlers. It was red, all right, a rich shade of red, in tight, burnished ringlets close to her head, as if the whole thing had been sculptured from one ingot of pure

copper.

She smiled. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “very pretty. How about those names?”

“My face is a little tanned already, too. Did you notice?”

I stood facing her, blocking her way. “The hell with

your face.”

Her eyebrows rose coolly. “You appear to be in your usual bad mood. Didn’t you sleep well?”

“I slept fine,” I said. “I asked you a question. Have you got those names straightened out yet?”

“Would it inconvenience you too much if I had a cup of coffee before you started hounding me about it?”

She had a cup of coffee in the kitchen, black coffee

with a slug of whisky in it. I sat down across from her.

“Are you going to call those banks?” I asked.

“Only as a last resort. I’ll think about it some more

first.”

“Don’t you know that the more you think about it, the more mixed up you’ll get?”

She shook her head. “No. You see, when I wrote them down, with the names of the banks, I remembered the last names came in alphabetical order— Carstairs, Hatch, and Manning—and what I’m trying to remember now is whether the banks actually came in the order in which I

went into them. I can almost see the list. It’s so tantalizing—at times I’m positive I visualize it exactly as it was.”

“Where is the list?” I demanded.

She shrugged. “It was in the house. I forgot to pick it

up.”

“You forgot!”

“Nobody is perfect.” She smiled. “Even the great Mr.

Scarborough forgot to bring in the paper he bought.”

There it was again, that subtle needling. She knew, all right. She was laughing at me.

I leaned across the table. “Don’t stall me,” I said. “I can’t take much more of you. Are you trying to beat me out of that money?”

“Why should I?” she asked, wide-eyed. “If you carry out your end of the bargain, I can assure you I’ll carry out

mine.”

“All right,” I said. “All right. Quit stalling.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m positive that before the end of

the month I will have remembered how they go.” I stared at her through a red mist of rage. I wanted to

smash that hateful face with my hands.

“Before it’s all over one of you will kill the other.”

I pushed back from the table, choking.

“By the way,” she said calmly, “I thought you were

going to take the radio out and have it repaired.”

I grabbed up the radio and fled.

It was like one of those dreams where you discover yourself walking out onto a stage naked before a thousand people. The minute I stepped onto the sidewalk I began to cringe. I was not only naked, I was skinless.

I forced myself to walk slowly to the car. When I was inside it wasn’t quite so bad. I drove as if the car were held together with paper clips.

A man was selling papers on a corner. I stopped, hit the horn, and passed him a nickel without looking at him as he handed the paper in. I couldn’t look at it now. I drove on, out the beach. The city began to drop away behind me. It was a bright, sunlit day with a soft breeze blowing in off the Gulf.

There were few cars now. I pulled out of the tracks and stopped among the dunes. Opening the paper was like digging up an unexploded bomb.

I looked at it.

She hadn’t remembered yet. There was no picture.

But there wouldn’t be, I thought. I’d be in jail before

they gave the story to the papers.

“MYSTERY SLAYER SOUGHT,” the headline said.

There was nothing new. They had just put the story together, with the evidence they had and what Charisse Finley had told them. Mrs. Butler and I had gone back to the house to pick up the money, and as soon as I got it I killed her and set fire to the house in an attempt to cover it up.

It was airtight. How else could they figure it?

I looked around. There were no cars in sight. I got out, carrying the radio, and walked through the dunes toward the line of brush and scrubby salt cedars back from the beach. I threw the radio into it.

“Hey, mister,” a boy’s voice said, “why’d you throw away your radio?”

I whirled. A boy of ten or twelve had come out of the bushes carrying a .22 rifle. He walked over to the radio and picked it up.

I looked at him, stupefied. Where had he come from? Then another boy walked out of the tangle of cedar ten yards away. He was carrying a rifle too.

“Hey, Eddie,” the first one called. “Lookit the radio. This man just threw it away. Can we have it, mister?”

I tried to think of something. My mouth felt dry. It was

ridiculous. The whole thing was insane.

“It’s no good,” I said at last. “It won’t play”

They stared at each other. “Why didn’t you have it

fixed?”

“I tell you, it’s no good!” I suddenly realized I was shouting angrily. I turned and ran back to the car.

I drove carefully and very slowly through the city, fighting every yard of the way against the almost unbearable longing to slam the accelerator to the floor and get back inside the apartment quicker, to pull the walls in around me and hide.

And when I got inside and closed the door I was in a trap. I could feel it tightening. This was where they would come to get me.

And she was there.

She was deliberately trying to drive me mad. Or kill me.

Friday..
.

Through the endless hot afternoon I watched her, listening always for the sound of the elevator in the corridor. She lay on the rug in the sun with the sleeves of her pajamas rolled up, and rubbed suntan lotion on her face. After she had tanned for a while she put on the high-heeled shoes and practiced the hip-crawling walk of Susie Mumble. She went up and down the living room before me for hours, working for just the exact amount of slow and tantalizing swing.

She stopped to light a cigarette. “How’m I doin’?” She asked.

“All right, all right. You catch on fast.”

“That was a brilliant idea you had,” she said. “How do you feel, having created Susie Mumble? Like some great director? Or perhaps as Pygmalion must have felt?” Then she stopped and said thoughtfully, as if to herself, “No, I guess not. Hardly as Pygmalion. He fell in love with Galatea, didn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know. They haven’t made a comic book of it yet.”

“Don’t reproach me with that, please. I was nasty. I’m sorry.”

So we were having a sweet phase? What was she up to now?

“I’m beginning to feel the part,” she said. “And the way to feel it is to live it, as Stanislavski says. I’m not acting Susie Mumble. I am Susie Mumble.”

“All right, all right, all right, for God’s sake, you’re Susie Mumble. But while you’re swinging it, will you please, for the love of God, try to remember how those names go?”

“Oh, that,” she said airily. “I’m sure it’ll come back to me in time. Or if it doesn’t, in another week or two I’ll call the banks, as you suggested.”

Another week or two! When she had the steel in you she knew just how to turn it.

She practiced the walk some more. She didn’t need to. I tried not to look at how she didn’t need to. She could drive you crazy with that alone.

The hours passed as the hours must pass in hell.

It was night again.

I drank coffee and smoked until there was no longer any feeling in my mouth. I turned on all the lights and stood for long periods under the cold shower, slapping myself awake. I listened for the elevator in terror.

How much longer could I go on? Any hour the police might come. There was no way to tell when they might find out who I was. How much longer could I keep from going to sleep? If I dropped off she’d kill me. I could lock myself in the bathroom and go to sleep on the floor, but that would be telling her.

Why didn’t I quit? Why didn’t I just pick up the phone and tell the police to come and get her? I could run. Maybe they wouldn’t even look for me if they had her.

Then I would think of that money again and know I couldn’t ever quit. She couldn’t whip me. I would stay here and play her war of nerves with her until hell froze over and you could skate across on the ice. No woman ever born was going to cheat me out of that money now, or any part of that money. It was mine. I was going to have it. I’d get it.

I suddenly realized I was saying it aloud, to an empty room.

I dozed, sitting up. At the slightest sound I jerked erect, my heart hammering wildly. I would be drenched with sweat.

Saturday... I sneaked out to the car once and drove around until I

could buy a paper without getting out.

They had found Finley’s car at the airport.

“MYSTERY SLAYER SOUGHT HERE.”

Charisse Finley still hadn’t remembered my name. They had nothing but a description.

But they were closing in, narrowing the field. They were driving me forever toward a smaller and smaller corner.

I began to wonder if I was near the breaking point.

No! I would beat her. I could still beat her.

Though none of it showed anywhere on the surface, I knew it had to be working on her just the same as it was on me. She knew the police were looking for me, and if they found me they found her. God knows what went on inside that chromium-plated soul of hers, but no human being ever born could go on taking that kind of pressure forever without breaking. All I had to do was wait her out. All I had to do was keep her from getting a chance to kill me, and keep myself from going berserk and killing her. If I could sweat it out I could make her break and admit she had remembered how those names went. After all, she must want to run, too.

I watched her for signs of cracking. There were none. There were none at all. She lay with her face and arms in the sunlight and hummed softly to herself. She worked on Susie’s speech and mannerisms like an actress getting ready for opening night. She was sweet. And she wasn’t worried about anything at all.

The rent on those safe-deposit boxes was paid up for nearly a full year, she said.

Sometime after she had gone to bed I fell asleep. I didn’t know when, or how long I slept. The last thing I remembered was sitting straight upright straining my ears for the elevator, and then, somehow, I was lying stretched out on the sofa with that awful feeling of having been awakened by some tiny sound. I jerked my head up and looked groggily around the room, not seeing her at first.

Then I did.

She was slipping silently out into the hallway from the bedroom. She had on that nylon robe, with nothing under it, and she was carrying the scissors in her hand. She was barefoot. She took another soft step and then she saw me looking at her.

She smiled. “Oh. I’m sorry I awakened you.”
I couldn’t say anything, or move.
She saw me staring at the scissors. She put up a hand

and patted the curls that gleamed softly in the light from the single lamp. “I was doing a little repair work on my hair. And I thought I’d slip out to the kitchen and get a drink.”

I sat up. I still couldn’t find my voice. Or take my eyes from the long, slender blades of those scissors.

She came on into the room and sat down on the floor with her back against the big chair across from me. “Now that I have awakened you with my blundering around,” she said sweetly, “why don’t we have a cigarette and just talk?”

I watched her with horror. She calmly lit a cigarette and leaned back against the chair, doubling her legs under her. She paid no attention to the fact that she had on nothing beneath that flimsy robe.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” she said quietly.

So I thought I could make her crack? Somewhere deep inside me I could feel myself beginning to come unstuck. I sat still and clenched my jaws together to keep my teeth from chattering. I was shaking as if with a chill.

She opened the scissors, playing with them in her hands. She balanced one slender, shining blade on her fingertip, like a child enchanted with some new toy, and looked from it to me and smiled.