Murder for the Bride (24 page)

He pushed her forward and we drew back, all of us. He moved slowly and carefully.

“You won’t get far,” the white-haired man said gently.

“I might. The Renner woman contacted me here. She said she had the list and she was going to trade it with you people. I sent word back and then got orders. She let me in that night when I said I had a good offer for her. I killed her and let Smith in to search the place. And all the time you had it, Bryant. Move away from the door, Bryant, my old dear friend. My stupid friend.”

I hesitated and then moved away. He spun her around quickly, and backed with her to the door. Just as he moved backward into the hallway, after a quick glance behind him, the sharp sound of the shot rang in the hall. Tram dropped like a sackful of water. Barney Zeck appeared, dusty and apologetic, a spaniel frown on his face.

“Guess I was a little hasty, maybe,” he said uncertainly. “Had to get the spinal cord. Any other way and the spasm makes him yank the trigger.”

I
slept until noon, got up and took another shower, hacked off the beard, and dressed in fresh clothes. The temporary relief of the rain hadn’t lasted long. The thick heavy heat had spread itself over the city again, like a fat woman face down on a mudbank.

I took the phone from behind the drapery and phoned the hospital. It took them fifteen minutes to find out that she was in the process of being discharged. I told them to tell her I’d be over to pick her up.

I went over in a cab and told the driver to wait. Jill was standing at the desk, writing a check.

“Have a nice sleep, honey?” I asked.

She turned toward me. She had had a nice sleep. She looked glowing, and very lovely. I walked her out to the cab.

She got in. “Damn,” she said.

“What’s the trouble?”

“I could have had a by-line. Instead of pounding a typewriter, where was I? In a hospital, pounding my ear, full of sleeping pills. Great! Work your heart out for a yarn and somebody else writes it.”

“You’re cute as hell when you’re mad,” I said.

“Oh, be quiet.”

“Do we just ride and ride?” the driver asked.

I gave him the name of the big air-conditioned restaurant, the same place I had walked out of, leaving Jill behind, a million years ago.

We got a booth after a short wait, and ordered two big steaks.

“Give you much trouble yesterday?” she asked.

“Oh, they kept me around until I was groggy. Dictating statements, signing them. It was a busy place. Immigration gets a bunch of aliens to deport.”

“I still have that to face. But I’m rested up now.”

She made a low growl as the steak was placed in front of her. As she started to cut it, I said, “Nothing annoys me more than secrecy. Phony secrecy. In your file you wrote something about Laura and the party being dangerous. I didn’t know which party you meant until I found out you’d tipped them about Tram some time ago.”

She worked on the steak for a while. “There’s nothing I hate worse than somebody digging around in my personal papers.”

“
Touché!
I was looking for cigarettes. Anyway, I told Tram about the file. That’s why you had callers. I guess he had to know what was in it.”

“I had callers because I said too much over the phone to someone who sounded like you. The file had nothing to do with it.”

“All right. We’ll call that point a draw. Even all around. Point number two. Why didn’t you tell me you saw Tram coming from Laura’s apartment that night?”

She gave me a wide-eyed stare, a bland stare. “But I didn’t! I sensed a bluff, so I raised the pot.”

“And nearly got yourself clobbered.”

She grinned. “Ever hear about tattletale gray? You should have seen your face as Tram was marching me out.”

“You were a nice color too. Like avocado meat.”

“Something I didn’t eat, no doubt.”

“Look, I want to talk about something. About that note you left for me.”

“There’s nothing to say, Dil. Nothing at all. We were two weary people. And weary people make mistakes. Just skip it.” She looked down at her plate.

“Look at me, Jill.”

“You bother me. Let me eat.”

“Look at me.”

Her eyes came up defiantly.

“Now tell me, slowly and distinctly, to stay out of your life,” I said.

“Stay—st—” She snatched up her napkin and buried her eyes in it. “That isn’t a fair thing to do,” she said, her voice muffled.

“You can’t say it,” I said.

The napkin dropped into her lap. She lifted her chin. Her gray eyes didn’t see me. “Go away, Dillon Bryant, and stay out of my life. I mean it.”

I got up and got out of there. How wrong can you get? I went to see Sam. I went back onto the payroll, officially. He said to pick up the plane tickets the next afternoon. He said he’d wire Paul right away. Sam tried to ask me some questions. I didn’t feel like answering them, and told him so.

“Engineers!” he said with rumbling disgust. “For Chrissake, I’d rather run a chicken farm.”

I decided to be taken drunk, but the second one stuck in my throat. I did a lot of walking. It felt funny to walk around the city and have nobody interested in me, feel no eyes boring into that spot between my shoulder blades.
The federal people had chased the reporters away. Everybody had the same answer. No comment. Smith was the pigeon for murders two and three. Widdmar was elected for the first one, Laura. It was a tired, hot, aimless, empty city, and the only thing ahead of me was a lot of work south of the border. I had to do something about Laura’s money. Some lawyer had been trying to get hold of me.

At about five o’clock I began to get mad. It took a funny form, that anger. It transmuted itself into a couple of bottles in one bag, and a bunch of groceries in the other. There was a shining new lock on Jill’s door.

Her eye appeared at the peephole. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“Refuge. I’m being pursued.”

After long seconds the door opened. I pushed it open the rest of the way and went by her. I walked into the kitchen and put the stuff on the shelf. She stood behind me. She wore a print housecoat. Very severe. When I turned, she looked angry.

“Well?”

“Go out and sit. Turn on the fountain. I’m mixing a drink.”

She shrugged and left the kitchen. Things were definitely cool. There were faint blue patches under her eyes. She looked as though she had been weeping.

I brought out her drink and mine and sat down expansively. “Cozy here.”

“Isn’t it,” she said.

“The international situation still looks rough.”

“It certainly does.”

“Funny shape for a little birthmark, isn’t it?”

“Damn you, Dillon Bryant!”

We sat in a stiff silence, sipping the drinks from time to time. I got up and made some more and brought them back.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Don’t make me answer that. It’ll spoil my technique.”

“Don’t you try to kiss me again. I mean that.”

“I don’t intend to try, thank you.”

The sun was at last too low to reach into the court.
Blue shadows began to gather. She was getting more nervous by the minute.

“What
do
you want?” she demanded.

“My goodness! Why can’t you just be a hostess?”

After the third round I went over and made myself comfortable on the couch. She paced back and forth as on a previous night. She hung a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, popped the kitchen match on her thumbnail, and took a kick at the leg of the coffee table. She trailed smoke after her. I laced my hands behind my head and smiled at her most amiably.

She stopped by the couch, staring down at me. “You—you—”

“Louse? Creep? You think of a good word.”

She looked down at me and her face crumpled up, like the face of a child whose temper has been tried past endurance, right up to the point of tears. She fell onto my chest hard enough to drive the wind out of me. She hammered at me with one fist, her face buried in my neck. I held her and let the storm blow itself out. It did, at last, and became nothing more than dry, infrequent hiccups.

She lay still, breathing softly. I got one hand under her chin, lifted her head, pulled her up a bit, and fitted her mouth down over mine. She held her lips tightly together. And I felt that she was holding her breath.

At last she sighed against my mouth and her lips went warm and slack, like the lips of a sleepy child, parting slightly. I found the concavity of the small of her back and stroked it gently. Something new came into her lips, into her body, into her breathing. Her arms tightened and urgency came over her and she came astonishingly alive.

She lifted her head quickly, her eyes lambent. “Hey!” she said. She dipped her lips for more.

I sat up and placed her gently on the couch at arm’s length. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her head like a flower on a stalk, too heavy for the stalk.

“Busted spring?”

“Completely,” she breathed.

I stood up. “Ice gone?”

“All of a sudden,” she whispered.

“This we do right. This we do in a traditional way, even
to the ring. I’m leaving tomorrow. Give yourself time.”

“I don’t need time. I don’t want time.”

“I want you to have some anticipation. Look, I can finish up with Harrigan in a month. And when I come back here, I want to take you with me onto the next job.”

I walked toward the door. She came after me. “Dil! The food you brought! Dil, don’t leave me!”

Oh, I was a strong-minded character, all right. I left. I got out on the sidewalk and it took me ten minutes to get ten steps from the front door. I thought I had the right answer. I thought I had the right way to do it. Back in the place I would always think of as Laura’s apartment, I let the phone ring and ring. I paced and smoked and paced some more. I wanted to punch holes in the wall. When the knock came on the door, I opened it.

She even remembered to bring over the groceries.

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.