Galatea

  CHAPTER XV

  I CAME BACK, ATE A take-out, ran the pump, but just a little, as the light rain that had fallen couldn’t have done much for the well. I climbed up and gauged, thinking of what she had said. I met Homer when he came, rode with him out to the spinach patch, cut the last of our crop, and helped him load his crates. I told him that was all, he needn’t come any more, said I might be leaving, and shook hands. I rolled out the cultivator, from the shed where I’d put it when Lippert was taken away, finished up with my work. I got out the harrow, did what I could with that, rolled it back in the shed. By then it was coming on dark, and at last I could take off my workclothes, pack them in my bag, put on a decent suit, and be ready to leave, I hoped for good. I had just slicked down my hair when lights showed outside, and there was Val in his car.

  I took it, put it away, and went to the living-room when he called come in. By then he had the lights on and was parked on the sofa, one hand held to his head as he stared down at the floor. I paid no attention to that, as he had plenty of reason, considering all that had happened, to feel low in his mind, but sat in my place on the love seat, I hoped for the last time. I waited for him to speak, but all of a sudden felt nervous when I saw him peeping at me, just once, through his fingers. At last I heard myself say: “Mr. Val—did you get me—that confession?”

  “I did, Duke. I did indeed.”

  He got up and went to the dining-room, the main one, that they didn’t use, and I heard him go to his office, which was at the front of the house and was reached by the dining-room door. He came back with an envelope, came over and handed it to me. It had my name on it, in ink, Duke Webster, Esq., a small, tight handwriting I’d never seen, but that I took to be his. The envelope flap was open, but inside, at last, was this thing that had plagued me so, a typed-up sheet in the form of a letter to Daniel, on the letterhead of the Prince Georges County Police. However, one corner, the one where I’d signed my name, was torn off, and I must have looked funny when I noticed it, as he said: “I did that, Duke. I had a reason.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Val, of course. Without that, it’s just a piece of paper—exactly as I’d want it. For a second—I was—startled—but I’m really—much obliged.”

  “That much was due you, I thought.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “Duke, there was something I meant to do. Something that had to involve me with the police. It seemed only fair, since I would be searched and the place might be, not to leave things lying around that might involve you too. Especially considering the obligation I felt for what you did yesterday. So, to leave you easy in mind, with the confession accounted for, but at the same time not make you trouble, I did what we do in business, when things of that kind come up—I tore the signature off. That would have left you completely in the clear, as I had made Daniel turn it over to me before he had a chance to have photostats made. There’s only one copy, the one you have in your hand. Does that explain it for you?”

  “Not wholly, sir. No.”

  “Say what it is that puzzles you.”

  “Why would the cops make a search?”

  “You feel that concerns you?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but it might. I have the paper, and I thank you. But, if I may say what I think, you’re still talking peculiarly.”

  “I meant to kill a man.”

  “Who, Mr. Val?”

  “How would that concern you?”

  By then there was no mistaking the hard light in his eye, but I had what I wanted of him, and that seemed to make things different. I said: “From where I sit it does. Spit it out, Mr. Val. I asked you who.”

  He didn’t answer, but his hand, which had been jammed in his right coat pocket, came out with a little jerk. In it was a gun, a blue automatic, that he leveled directly at me. He said: “Burn your paper, Duke. On that your mind should be at rest. I want it to be.”

  I piled confession and envelope in the copper ashtray, and my fingers trembled as I held the match, perhaps from fear of the gun, but mainly I think from relief the thing was destroyed, as I don’t remember, at that time, thinking much about the gun at all. He watched the flame, and made no move as I took the paper-cutter, chopped the embers up, and emptied them in the fireplace, banging the copper on brick. When I blew on it and put it back, he said: “Sit down—perhaps I can elucidate. Perhaps I can explain how it didn’t concern you at first, and then later did.”

  He backtracked to the previous day, when he drove off in the dark, leaving me alone by the telephone. He said he’d gone to Cheverly, where the county hospital was, to talk to the cops who had Lippert, “on your behalf, Duke, because at that time I had only respect for this thing you’d done. Respect? It was reverence, as I couldn’t have done it myself, I’m too weak. The act, as I thought, of a fine righteous outrage, of loyalty to an employer, a benefactor, a friend. I wanted those cops to know that whatever Lippert would do, they had a fight on their hands, and leading that fight would be me. And I happen to have some influence, here in Prince Georges County, whether they think so or not. That was my frame of mind when I parked by the Cheverly Hospital. Imagine my feelings when I started into the place and saw my own wife’s car parked there beside mine.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him the reason she’d gone there, but decided that any reason that I knew before he did could only make things worse. I clammed, watched the gun, and waited. He went on, almost sobbing, to tell the ride he had taken, “for hours, through a drizzling rain, to Annapolis. To Solomons. To La Plata. Any place, to try and deaden the torture in my heart. No use. No use. No use!”

  By now he didn’t even try to hide the tears in his eyes, but reached around with his left to his right-hand hip pocket, got his handkerchief out, and wiped them off. Then he told of how he’d come home, and then in the morning had kept his promise. He said: “I went to the bank, got the confession out, and came with it here, to give you. I called, but you weren’t around, and I went to my desk for an envelope, so I could leave it, in your room some place, where you’d be sure to find it. And there, in my desk drawer, looking at me, was this gun. Duke, do you know whose it is?”

  I had the shivers so bad, from realizing that all this must have been while she and I were out back, holding hands in her car, that I was a little late when I said: “... My gun, I imagine.”

  “Your gun, Duke, that Officer Daniel took off you, the gun I made him give me, with the confession you’d given, that morning down in Marlboro, to assure you complete protection. That gun, this gun, looked up to mock me.”

  “Mr. Val, I don’t get the point.”

  “It told me, this forty-five did, what one man had done. One gallant man, I thought. A thing beyond me, as I haven’t the strength. But the gun would give me strength. With it I could do what in my heart I knew I must. I sat down. I thought it out. I tore your signature off the confession. I enclosed it in an envelope, put it in the drawer. I took the gun out. I drove to Cheverly. I lost my nerve. I drove to Marlboro, to Glen Burnie, all over, as I had during the night. I drove to Cheverly again.”

  He stopped, sobbed, stared at the gun, went in kind of a trance. I asked him: “Have you killed Lippert?”

  “No, thank God, no.”

  He seemed to shrivel as he sat there, pitying himself for “being inspired by a god, a god who turned into a rat—by you, Duke, that’s the horror of it.” Little as I pitied him, and bad as he had me scared, I caught something in his eyes just the same, that I knew most men never feel, of torture, at being fooled, at having his power mocked, that for a second or two changed him from a bedbug into a guy, and a terrific guy at that. But then all that was gone, when he began working me over, all he had done to help me: “—for your own good, Duke. Just to help you go straight. Out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “You sure got a heart and a half.”

  He jumped up, ran around the table, chocked the gun in my ribs, and said apologize. I clipped him, bouncing him off the table, so
it rocked around on the rug. But it was just an uppercut, pulled up from a sitting position, and he didn’t really go out. Quick as I jumped for the gun, he was quicker with his roll, so he fetched up against the wall, the gun still leveled at me. He screamed back up and I backed, but had gained a little at that. If plugging me was the idea, why hadn’t he already done it? He had to have more on his mind, and I could risk one pitch to uncover it. I said: “You didn’t kill Lippert, then. If not, why not?”

  “He had a better idea.”

  That wasn’t so good, and when he told me sit down, I went back to my place. He started straightening table, ashtray, and rug, and I said: “Take your time, bus boy, do it right.”

  “So, you’ve been talking to Bill!”

  “Who has your number, I’d say.”

  “That worthless, good-for-nothing drunk, who couldn’t even keep up with the mortgage till I stepped in at the bank. Calling me a bus boy, a bedbug—”

  “But if you are a bedbug—”

  For one awful second I thought I’d overshot it and would hear the better idea somewhere in kingdom come. I shut up and did it quick, and he sat down on the sofa again and wiped his tears again, but not until he’d finished at the table, being a bus boy until the last thing was in place. He said: “He begged me, Lippert did, on his knees with his hands up, on his bed, soon as he saw me. I went in without knocking, ready to shoot six bodyguards if it was necessary, to do what I had to do, which was—shoot him. He knew from my eye what I meant, and wailed like a puppy-dog: ‘Please, Mr. Val, no! You’ve got the wrong man, I swear!’”

  He said he hadn’t believed Lippert, even a little bit, but wanted to watch his eyes before he died, and told him, “about Dan Sickles, what he had done, what the jury had done, and the rest—which he said didn’t apply.”

  I said: “Who is Dan Sickles, by the way?”

  “Duke, Washingtonians know.”

  “However, I’m from Nevada.”

  “Sickles married a wife. The wife took a lover. Sickles shot him dead, and the jury acquitted Sickles, fast. I wanted Lippert to know it would do the same for me.”

  He sobbed, went on: “But Lippert kept wailing: ‘It’s another guy, Mr. Val—she was over here, begging me here in this room, that I should spare his life.’ And that I couldn’t laugh off, as I knew she had been there, because I’d seen her car myself. And yet I still didn’t believe him when he said the guy was you, Duke, that he’d been brought there just to be hit, that she’d even admitted as much. But then, Duke, he said: ‘I’ve placed him at last, Mr. Val, that hired man of yours. He was king of the sparring partners. He trained all the champs, out west. He was the guy who could get the weight off!’”

  Once Lippert had told him that, we were into the last round, and I did no more pretending, but sat there and waited. He balanced the gun on his knee, wiped his eyes some more, drew some deep breaths, and then, in a quiet conversational way, went on: “Duke, it was interesting, my talk with Lippert. Once I realized, and he knew I realized, that he was telling the truth, he gave it to me quick, the talks he’d had with her, kidding along on the phone, the cock-and-bull story she’d told, about the uppity hired man, the real purpose he had which was getting the Ladyship account. That all corresponded, right down to a T, with what I already knew, and there was nothing I could say. But mainly he talked about Sickles, refreshing my recollections on angles I had forgotten—fascinating angles that put the whole matter in a totally different light.”

  “May I ask what those angles were?”

  “I’ll tell you, Duke, in due time.”

  “I’d like to say one thing.”

  “Feel free, Duke. Please.”

  “It may be true I’m in love with your wife. It may be true I helped save her from a fate, from a death you were fattening her for. It’s not true we’ve done anything we shouldn’t.”

  “That’s a lie, you have.”

  He began screaming, that he’d trusted her, trusted me, “and all that time, every day, she was out there in your bed—your bed, oh God, your BED!”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Because she hasn’t been in mine—not since you came here, not once. She was sick, she was cut up by barbwire, she was this, she was that, and, fool that I was, I believed her!”

  By then I could hear Jordan roll, and yet, as I sat there, my heart gave one little bump, after those insane nights I had spent, knowing she was in here with him, to find out now she’d been true to me all along. He must have known how it changed the score, because he sat for some seconds staring, trying to look at me and not being able to. Then he told me move to the sofa, put my hands on the table, and keep my back to the phone. I did as he said, heard him pick up the receiver and dial. He asked for Bill’s number, and when a voice answered, I began to feel sick, because I knew it was Holly. He talked along very friendly, and I could tell, from what was being said, she was alone in Bill’s house. When he found that out, he said she could come on up, that I was all ready to go, with the confession burned and everything, but wanted to tell her good-by. From her voice I knew she was worried, and after what she had said, at the water tank that morning, about the fear she had for me, and what she would do about it, I knew if he kept at it there could be only one answer. Sure enough, after a break while she thought it over, I heard her tell him: “All right,” and he was excited when he hung up.

  He said: “Well, she’s on her way, but we still have plenty of time to get her welcome ready. Go to the kitchen, Duke. Walk backwards, and hold your hands out toward me.”

  He snapped the kitchen light on, told me to turn on the spigot over the sink. I did, he snapped the light off, and we marched back, I taking my place on the sofa and holding my hands as before. He said: “I didn’t get the reason until after I left Lippert, but she’s been making me gauge. Climb up on the tank to gauge. Telling me you were lazy, and not running the pump as you should. Insisting I climb up and gauge, while you were dressing for dinner. I thought it was funny, until driving home just now it came to me, what you and she have been up to, what you’ve had in mind. Well, we’ll have some gauging soon. But of course we must have a reason—for the officers, when they come. The empty tank will explain it.”

  We sat, I in his place on the sofa, he in mine on the love seat, the gun keeping us company, along with the splash of the water. He said: “Interesting sound, isn’t it? Like blood on a slaughterhouse floor. Very wasteful, that blood. On account of the law we have, covering tubercular cattle, no part of the carcass can pass till the inspector sees the lungs, and the blood goes down the drain—we use it in fertilizer only. Would make the best bouillon cubes, but we’re forbidden to use it for that. Still, society must be protected against disease, tubercles, parasites of all kinds.”

  “Like bedbugs?”

  “And jailbirds.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE WATER KEPT RUNNING, until I thought I’d go nuts, and still he made me sit there, while he giggled along about blood. When her lights flashed in the window, I intended wonderful stuff, like warning her off, with yells, but all I did was lean back, the second he told me do it, fold my hands on one knee, and act natural. I’d heard of guys that broke, in the middle of the third degree, not from the rubber hose, but from what the cops asked them, stuff they couldn’t answer. It had all seemed so fine, the way she’d figured it out, to save me by using the tank, and the way I had shooed her off, that morning to keep it decent—so long as it was our little secret. But when he caught on to it all, dragged it out in the open, and smeared it and stank it and fouled it, I could hardly speak any more—from fear or whatever it was, but mostly I think from shame, that anyone would know but us.

  She came in very cagey as he opened the door, keeping his right side from her, and holding the gun in his pocket. She looked from him to me and back, trying to get some clue to what went on. Because from her angle, if I looked slightly queer, I was supposed to put on an act, and if he looked slightly silly, he generall
y did anyway, so that didn’t prove a great deal. As to why I played it so quiet, I don’t deny I was scared, but at the same time, there was a hundred-to-one chance he might lose his nerve, now that he’d blown off his steam, as he had done on the way to Cheverly—provided I did nothing to steam him up again. And no hero act I could think of would top a forty-five gun.

  She was still in the clothes she had worn when we said good-by that morning—slacks, tan coat, and red things—and as she stood pulling off her gloves, her face began to screw up at the sound of water gurgling. About that time it gave a yurp, meaning the pipe was empty, coughed once or twice, and stopped. She said, pretty annoyed: “Well, that’s nice. The second I turn my back, Val, you let the water run out. I hope we don’t have a fire, and I hope, before he goes, Duke will pump a few gallons up. I remind you this property’s mine.”

  She went to the kitchen and he let her. While she was closing the spigot, he jerked the front door open and had a flash at her car, maybe to look for Bill. When she came back he was walking up and down, about the same as before. But she studied him sharper now, especially his jaw, which was getting red where I’d clipped him. She said: “Val, what have you done to your face?”

  “Duke did it. He hit me.”

  “ ... What for?”

  “Trying to get the gun.”

  He took it out then and stood with it half raised, so it all but pointed at her, and also covered me. She said: “Well. You can’t really blame Duke. Not much, at least. For not liking—a gun.”

  “It’s his gun. It’s the same old gun.”

  “And you’re the same old Val, I see.”