The Grifters (14 page)

First there had been the warning call from Baltimore; then, responding to it, her frantic, unreasoning flight. She drove as hard as she could and as long as she could. When she could go no further, she turned in at the Tucson tourist court.

The place had a garage, rather than individual car ports, and she hadn't liked that. But she was too tired to go farther; and since a garage attendant was on duty at all times, she could not reasonably object to the arrangement.

She put the loaded gun under her pillow. She undressed and went to bed. Yes, naturally she had locked her door, but that probably didn't mean much. Those places, motels and tourist courts, lost so many keys that they often had them made interchangeable, the same keys unlocking different doors. And that was doubtless the case here.

Anyway, she awakened hours later, with two hands clutching her throat. Hands that silenced any outcry she might make as they strangled her to death. She couldn't see who it was; she didn't care. She had been warned that she would be killed, and now she was being killed and that was enough to know.

She got the gun from under her pillow. Blindly, she had shoved it upward, into the face of her assailant. And pulled the trigger. And- and-

Lilly shuddered convulsively, her voice breaking. "God, Roy, you don 't know what it was like! What it means to killsomeone!Allyour life you hear about it and read about it, b-but-but when you do it yourself
.

Moira was in her nightclothes, an old trick of nocturnal prowlers. Caught in another's room, they lay it to accident, claiming that they left their own room on some innocent errand and somehow strayed into the wrong one.

There was a tagged key in Moira's pocket-the key to a nearby room. Also, it was the key to Lilly's 'predicament. It pointed to a plan, ready-made, and without thinking she knew what she must do.

She put Moira in her bed. She wiped her own fingerprints from the gun, and pressed Moira's prints upon it. She spent the night in Moira's room, and in the morning she checked out under Moira's name and with the dead woman's clothes.

Naturally, she couldn't take her own car. The car and the money hidden in it now belonged to Moira also. For Moira was now Lillian Dillon, and Lilly was Moira Langtry. And so it must always be.

"
What a mess! And all for nothing, I guess. I was jake with Bobo all the time, but now that it's happened…" She paused, brightening a little. "Well, maybe it's a break for me, after all. I've been wanting out of the racket for yea rs, and now I'm out. I can make a clean start, and
…"

"
You've already made a start," Roy said. "But it doesn't look very clean to me
."

"
I'm sorry. " Lilly flushed guiltily. "I hated to take your money, but
-"

"
Don't be sorry, "Roy said. "You're not taking it
."

For a long moment, a silent second-long eternity, Lilly sat staring at her son. Looking into eyes that were her eyes, meeting a look as level as her own. So much alike, she thought, and the thought was also his.
Why can 't I make him understand?
she thought. And he thought,
Why can 't I make her understand?

Shakily, a cold deadness growing in her heart, she arose and went into the bathroom. She bathed her face in the sink, patted it dry with a towel, and took a drink of water. Then, thoughtfully, she refilled the glass and carried it out to her son. Why, thank you, Lilly, he said, touched by the small courtesy, disarmed by it. And Lilly told herself,
He's askingfor it. Ihelped him when he was in a bind, and if he tries to hold out on me now, well he just hadn 't better
.

"I have to have that dough, Roy," she said. "She had a bankbook in her purse, but that doesn't do me any good. I can't risk tapping it. All she had on her was a few hundred bucks, and what the hell am I going to do with that?"

Roy said she could do quite a bit with it. A few hundred would get her to San Francisco or some other not-too-distant city. It would give her a month to live quietly while she looked for a job.

"A job!" Lilly gasped. "I'm almost forty years old, and I've never held a legit job in my life!"

"You can do it," Roy said. "You're smart and attractive. There are any number of jobs you can hold. Just dump the Cad somewhere. Bury it. A Cad won't fit in with the way you'll be living, and-"

"Save it!" Lilly cut him off with an angry, knifing gesture. "You sit there telling me what to do-a guy socrooked that he has to eat soup with a corkscrew-!"

"I shouldn't have to tell you. You should be able to see it for yourself." Roy leaned forward, pleadingly. "A legit job and a quiet life are the only way for you, Lil. You start showing up at the tracks or the hot spots and Bobo's boys will be on you."

"I know that, damnit! I know I've got to lay low, and I will. But the other-"

"It's good advice, Lilly. I'm following it myself."

"Yeah, sure you are! I see you giving up the grift!"

"What's so strange about it? It's what you wanted. You kept pushing it at me."

"Okay," Lilly said. "So you're on the level. So you don't need the money, do you? You don't need it or want it. So why the hell won't you give it to me?"

Roy sighed; tried to explain why: to explain acceptably the most difficult of propositions; i.e., that the painful thing you are doing for a person is really for his or her own good. And yet, talking to her, watching her distress, there was in his mind, unadmitted, an almost sadistic exulting.
Harking back to childhood, perhaps, rooted back there, back in the time when he had known need or desire, and been denied because the denial was good for him
. Now it was his turn. Now he could do the right thing-and yes, it was right- simply by doing nothing.
Now now now the pimp disciplining his whore listening to her pleas and striking yet another blow Now now now he was the wise and strong husband taking his frivolous wife in hand Now now now his subconscious was taking note of the bond between them, the lewd, forbidden and until now unadmitted bond. And so he must protect her. Keep her from the danger which the money would inevitably lead her to. Keep her available
…

"Now, look, Lilly," he said reasonably. "That money wouldn't last you forever; maybe seven or eight years. What would you do then?"

"Well… I'd think of something. Don't worry about that part."

Roy nodded evenly. "Yes," he said, "you'd think of something. Another racket. Another Bobo Justus to slap you around and burn holes in your hand. That's the way it would turn out, Lilly; that way or worse. If you can't change now, while you're still relatively young, how could you do it when you were crowding fifty?"

Fifty? There was an ancient sound about it and the odor of haggishness and the mouse-mouthed look of death
…

And Carol? Ah, yes, Carol. A dear girl, a desirable girl. Perhaps, except for the until-now-u nadm itted bond, THE girl. But as it was, onlya ploy, apawn in the game of life, death-and love-between Roy and Lillian Dillon. So
-

"So that's how it is, Lil," Roy said. "Why I can't let you have the money. I mean, uh-"

His voice faltered weakily, his eyes straying away from hers.

After a moment, Lilly nodded. "I know what you mean," she said. "I think I know."

"Well-" he gestured, his hands suddenly awkward. "It's certainly simple enough."

"Yes," Lilly said. "It's simple enough. Very simple. And it's something else, too."

There was a peculiar glow in her eyes, a strange tightness to her face, a subdued huskiness to her voice. Watching him, studying him, she slowly crossed one leg over the other.

"We're criminals, Roy. Let's face it…"

"We don't have to be, Lil. I'm turning over a new leaf. So can you."

"But we've always had class. We've kept our private lives fairly straight. There's been certain things we wouldn't do…"

"I know! So there's no complications! I can-we can-"

The leg was swinging gently; hinting, speaking to him. Holding him hypnotized
.

"Roy… what if I told you I wasn't really your mother? That we weren't related?"

"Huh!" He looked up startled. "Why, I-"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Of course you would. You don't need to tell me. Now, why would you like it Roy?"

He gulped painfully, attempted a laugh of assumed nonchalance. Everything was getting out of hand, out of his hands and into hers. The sudden awareness of his feelings, the sudden understanding of himself, all the terror and the joy and the desire held him thralled and wordless.

"Roy…" So softly that he could hardly hear it.

"Y-Yes?" He gulped again. "Yes?"

"I want that money, Roy. I've got to have it. Now, what do I have to do to get it?"

Lilly, he said, or tried to say it, and perhaps he did say some of what he meant to. Lilly, you know you can't go on like you were; you know you'll be caught, killed. You know I'm only trying to help you. If you didn't mean so much to me, I'd let you have the damned money. But I've got to stop you. I-I-"

"Maybe-" she was going to be fair about this. "You mean you really won't give it to me, Roy? You won't? Or will you? Can't I change your mind? What can I do to get it?"

And how could he tell her? How say the unsayable? And yet, as she arose, moved toward him with the tempting grace with which Moira had used to move-
Moira, another older woman, who had in essence been Lilly
-he tried to tell her. And jumbled as it was, it was enough for Lilly.

Why don't you finish your water, dear? she said. And gratefully, welcoming this brief respite, he raised the glass. And Lilly, her grip tight on the heavy purse, swung it with all her might.

It's my fault, she told herself; the way I raised him, his age, my age, wrestling and brawling him as though he were a kid brother; my fault, my creation. But what the hell can I do about that, now?

The purse crashed against the glass, shattering it. The purse flew open, and the money spewed out in a green torrent. A torrent splattered and splashed with red.

Lilly looked at it bewilderedly. She looked at the gushing wound in her son's throat. He rose up out of his chair, clutching at it, and an ugly shard of glass oozed out between his fingers. He said bubblingly, "Lil, I-w-whyy-" and then his knees crumpled under him, and he doubled over and pitched down upon the carpet of red-stained bills.

It was over that quickly. Over before she could explain or apologize-insofar as there was anything to explain or apologize for.

Matter-of-factly, she began to toe the unstained money to one side, gathering the bills into a pile. She tied them up in a towel from the bathroom, stowed it inside her clothes, and took a final look around the room.

All clear, it looked like. Her son had been killed by Moira, by someone who didn't exist. Sure, her own fingerprints were all over the room, but that wouldn't mean anything. After all, she'd been a visitor to Roy's room before his death, and, anyway, Lilly Dillon was officially dead.

And maybe I am, she thought. Maybe I wish to God that I was!

Bracing herself, she let her eyes stray down to her son. Abruptly, a great sob tore through her body, and she wept uncontrollably.

That passed.

She laughed, gave the thing on the floor an almost jeering glance.

"
Well, kid, it's only one throat, huh
?"

And then she went out of the room and the hotel, and out into the City of Angels.

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20/10/2007

LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/