Four Past Midnight (60 page)

When he'd seen the magazine, the actual
magazine
with his name in it above John Kintner's story, he felt like a man waking from a horrible episode of sleepwalking, an unconscious outing in which he has done some irrevocable thing. How had he let it go so far? It was supposed to have been a
joke,
for Christ's sake, just a little
giggle—

But he
had
let it go so far. The story had been published, and there were at least a dozen other people in the world who knew it wasn't his—including Kintner himself. And if one of them happened to pick up
Aspen Quarterly
—

He himself told no one—of course. He simply waited, sick with terror. He slept and ate very little that late summer and early fall; he lost weight and dark shadows brushed themselves under his eyes. His heart began to triphammer every time the telephone rang. If the call was for him, he would approach the instrument with dragging feet and cold sweat on his brow, sure it would be Kintner, and the first words out of Kintner's mouth would be,
You stole my story, and something has got to be done about it. I think I'll start by telling everybody what kind of thief you are.

The most incredible thing was this: he had
known
better. He had
known
the possible consequences of such an act for a young man who hoped to make a career of writing. It was like playing Russian roulette with a bazooka. Yet still ... still ...

But as that fall slipped uneventfully past, he began to relax a little.
The issue of Aspen Quarterly
had been replaced by a new issue. The issue was no longer lying out on tables in library periodical rooms all across the country; it had been tucked away into the stacks or transferred to microfiche. It might still cause trouble—he bleakly supposed he would have to live with that possibility for the rest of his life—but in most cases, out of sight meant out of mind.

Then, in November of that year, a letter from
Aspen Quarterly
came.

Mort held it in his hands, looking at his name on the envelope, and began to shake all over. His eyes filled with some liquid that felt too hot and corrosive to be tears, and the envelope first doubled and then trebled.

He had thought of suicide then—quite calmly and quite rationally. His mother had sleeping pills. He would use those. Somewhat eased by this prospect, he tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of stationery. He held it folded in one hand for a long moment and considered burning it without even looking at it. He wasn't sure he could stand to see the accusation held baldly up in front of him. He thought it might drive him mad.

He unfolded the letter.

Mort had read this letter twice, and then began to peal hoarse bursts of laughter at the house, which was luckily empty. He had heard of side-splitting laughter, and this was surely it—he felt that if he didn't stop soon, his sides really
would
split, and send his guts spewing out all over the floor. He had been ready to kill himself with his mother's sleeping pills, and they wanted to know if he was upset with the way the story had been typeset! He had expected to find that his career was ruined even before it was fairly begun, and they wanted more!
More!

He laughed—howled, actually—until his side-splitting laughter turned to hysterical tears. Then he sat on the sofa, reread Charles Palmer's letter, and cried until he laughed again. At last he had gone into his room and lain down with the pillows arranged behind him just the way he liked, and then he had fallen asleep.

He had gotten away with it. That was the upshot. He had gotten away with it, and he had never done anything even remotely like it again, and it had all happened about a thousand years ago, and so why had it come back to haunt him now?

He didn't know, but he intended to stop thinking about it.

“And right now, too,” he told the empty room, and walked briskly over to the coffeemaker, trying to ignore his aching head.

“Shut up.” He spoke in a conversational tone which was rather cheery ... but his hands were shaking as he picked up the Silex.

“Shut up, I'm warning you,” he said in his cheery conversational voice.

You might be very
ill.
In fact, you might be having a nervous
br—

“Shut
up!”
he cried, and threw the Silex as hard as he could. It sailed over the counter, flew across the room, turning over and over as it went, crunched into the window-wall, shattered, and fell dead on the floor. He looked at the window-wall and saw a long, silvery crack zig-zagging up to the top. It started at the place where the Silex had impacted. He felt very much like a man who might have a similar crack running right through the middle of his brain.

But the voice had shut up.

He walked stolidly into the bedroom, got the alarm clock, and walked back into the living room. He set the alarm for ten-thirty as he walked. At ten-thirty he was going to go to the post office, pick up his Federal Express package, and go stolidly about the task of putting this nightmare behind him.

In the meantime, though, he would sleep.

He would sleep on the couch, where he had always slept best.

“I am not having a nervous breakdown,” he whispered to the little voice, but the little voice was having none of the argument. Mort thought that he might have frightened the little voice. He hoped so, because the little voice had certainly frightened
him.

His eyes found the silvery crack in the window-wall and traced it dully. He thought of using the chambermaid's key. How the room had been dim, and it had taken his eyes a moment to adjust. Their naked shoulders. Their frightened eyes. He had been shouting, he couldn't remember what—and had never dared to ask Amy—but it must have been some scary shit, judging from the look in their eyes.

IfI I was ever going to have a nervous breakdown,
he thought, looking at the lightning-bolt senselessness of the crack,
it would have been then. Hell, that letter from Aspen Quarterly was nothing compared to opening a motel-room door and seeing your wife with another man, a slick real-estate agent from some shitsplat little town in Tennessee—

Mort closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was because another voice was clamoring. This one belonged to the alarm clock. The fog had cleared, the sun had come out, and it was time to go to the post office.

On the way, he became suddenly sure that Federal Express would have come and gone ... and Juliet would stand there at the window with her bare face hanging out and shake her head and tell him there was nothing for him, sorry. And his proof? It would be gone like smoke. This feeling was irrational —Herb was a cautious man, one who did not make promises that couldn't be kept—but it was almost too strong to deny.

He had to force himself out of the car, and the walk from the door of the post office to the window where Juliet Stoker stood sorting mail seemed at least a thousand miles long.

When he got there, he tried to speak and no words came out. His lips moved, but his throat was too dry to make the sounds. Juliet looked up at him, then took a step back. She looked alarmed. Not, however, as alarmed as Amy and Ted had looked when he opened the motel-room door and pointed the gun at them.

“Mr. Rainey? Are you all right?”

He cleared his throat. “Sorry, Juliet. My throat kind of double-clutched on me for a second.”

“You're very pale,” she said, and he could hear in her voice that tone so many of the Tashmore residents used when they spoke to him—it was a sort of pride, but it held an undertaste of irritation and condescension, as though he was a child prodigy who needed special care and feeding.

“Something I ate last night, I guess,” he said. “Did Federal Express leave anything for me?”

“No, not a thing.”

He gripped the underside of the counter desperately, and for a moment thought he would faint, although he had understood almost immediately that that was not what she had said.

“Pardon me?”

She had already turned away; her sturdy country bum was presented to him as she shuffled through some packages on the floor.

“Just the one thing, I said,” she replied, and then turned around and slid the package across the counter to him. He saw the return address was
EQMM
in Pennsylvania, and felt relief course through him. It felt like cool water pouring down a dry throat.

“Thank you.”

“Welcome. You know, the post office would have a cow if they knew we handle that Federal Express man's mail.”

“Well, I certainly appreciate it,” Mort said. Now that he had the magazine, he felt a need to get away, to get back to the house. This need was so strong it was almost elemental. He didn't know why—it was an hour and a quarter until noon—but it was there. In his distress and confusion, he actually thought of giving Juliet a tip to shut her up ... and that would have caused her soul, Yankee to its roots, to rise up in a clamor.

“You won't tell them, will you?” she asked archly.

“No way,” he said, managing a grin.

“Good,” Juliet Stoker said, and smiled. “Because I saw what you did.”

He stopped by the door. “Pardon me?”

“I said they'd shoot me if you did,” she said, and looked closely at his face. “You ought to go home and lie down, Mr. Rainey. You really don't look well at all.”

“Well,” he said, “maybe that's not such a bad idea. I still feel weak.”

“There's a virus going around. You probably caught it.”

Then the two women from Camp Wigmore—the ones everybody in town suspected of being lesbians, albeit discreet ones—came in, and Mort made good his escape. He sat in the Buick with the blue package on his lap, not liking the way everybody kept saying he looked sick, liking the way his mind had been working even less.

He started to pull the envelope open, and then the ladies from Camp Wigmore came back out and looked at him. They put their heads together. One of them smiled. The other laughed out loud. And Mort suddenly decided he would wait until he got back home.

He parked the Buick around the side of the house, in its customary place, turned off the ignition ... and then a soft grayness came over his vision. When it drew back, he felt strange and frightened. Was something wrong with him, then? Something physical?

No—he was just under strain, he decided.

He heard something—or thought he did—and looked around quickly. Nothing there.
Get hold of your nerves,
he told himself shakily.
That's really all you have to do—just get hold of your motherfucking nerves.

And then he thought:
I did have a gun. That day. But
it
was unloaded. I told them that, later. Amy believed me. I don't know about Milner, but Amy did, and—

He thought of the crack in the window—wall again, senseless silver lightning-bolt zig-zagging right up through the middle of things.
That's how it happens,
he thought.
That's how it happens in a person's life.

Then he looked down at the Federal Express package again. This was what he should be thinking about, not Amy and Mr. Ted Kiss-My-Ass from Shooter's Knob, Tennessee, but this.

The flap was already half open—everyone was careless these days. He pulled it up and shook the magazine out into his lap.
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
the logo said in bright red letters. Beneath that, in much smaller type,
June, 1980.
And below that, the names of some of the writers featured in the issue. Edward D. Hoch. Ruth Rendell. Ed McBain. Patricia Highsmith. Lawrence Block.