I was dragged up. Then a rock exploded in my face and I felt hot blood spurting out of my nose and sharp pain in my head.
“You stay off!” Steig snarled. “Stay off!”
I think he might have beaten me to death if Audrey hadn’t jumped up and grabbed his arm. She was Vaughan’s wife, Mr. Vaughan’s wife. He couldn’t afford to harm her.
He had to let me go. His way of letting go was shoving me across the room. I crashed into the partition that separated the room from the kitchenette. Then I slid down and crumpled into a heap on the rug.
“Let me go!” I heard Audrey screaming.
I couldn’t help. I was gone. Falling through a black pit that hurt. And hurt. And hurt.
CHAPTER FOUR
I felt lousy for a couple of days after that. Nothing seemed right.
Jones stopped around to tell me it was dangerous business getting mixed up with Jim’s crowd. He was a little late with that information, and I just grunted.
I told him I wanted to prefer charges against Steig but he said that was just a lot of trouble for nothing.
Nothing?
Yes, he said. How could I prove anything?
I pointed out that Audrey had been a witness, and Jones pointed out, not very gently, that Audrey herself was always being hauled in on drunk charges and that her testimony wasn’t worth anything. He also told me that Steig was bad business, as if I didn’t already know, and that he used to be a professional killer back in Chicago in the days before Jim got hold of him.
After Jones left, I drove to Peggy’s and found Jones just coming out of her apartment house. He grinned smugly at me.
Peggy was inside. So was Dennis. And another miserable afternoon began. Dennis was in a nasty mood and he made it plain that he was after Peggy and that he didn’t want me seeing her any more. That led to one thing and another and, finally, a brawl. I took out on Dennis all the anger Steig had built up inside me, and when the fight was over, Dennis was battered and bloody.
While he was picking himself up off the floor, Peggy announced that she thought it would be “nice” if I drove Dennis home.
Very nice.
I drove Dennis home. He didn’t open his mouth once during the drive, but as soon as he got inside the house at Malibu he began squabbling with Jim. Jim sent him upstairs and invited me into his den for another father-to-son chat.
I sat there stupidly while he told me that Peggy was his. Only his. I was to lay off from now on, and if I didn’t, well…
“I’m going to have Peggy,” he said. “I’m going to take her away from your dull influence. And if I have to lie to do it, I’ll lie, justifying the means by the end. You can rectify one lie. I’ll tell another. You can keep refuting one lie after the other but my words will go on and gradually they’ll forge ahead of you. I’ll build such a structure of lies around you that Peggy won’t know what to believe. I’ve done it and done it quite successfully with other men who were foolish enough to think they’d win Peggy. I have more strength than you. And more will. And I’ll beat you. There’s no step I won’t take.”
“Even unto murder,” I said.
And watched his face.
No tremor, no twitch. The man was a master at deception. He smiled casually.
“That’s for you to prove, isn’t it?” he said.
He smiled and I had to face it. It was the cold, unyielding smile of the professional killer.
“I’ll get Audrey to tell me all about your…” I started.
At last. A rise.
“You’ll leave Audrey out of this,” he said tensely.
“I’ll leave nothing out of this,” I said as slowly and as hostilely as I could, “because you’ll leave nothing out; you just said so. Because your war is no gentleman’s war.”
“You’ll leave Audrey out of this.”
More strenuously spoken. The composure was going slightly. And it gave me a distinct pleasure to see it peeling away.
“Someone Is Bleeding,” I said.
I drove home slowly. I thought all the way of the look of white, shaking rage I’d finally managed to wreak out of Jim. Of his threats which he obviously had the means to carry out. Of my poor, ineffectual rebuttals. Of whether I could do anything I’d threatened.
There was one thing necessary, I realized.
Pinning the murder on him. The rest didn’t matter anyway. Why hurt Audrey? Why hurt Dennis? They weren’t responsible for anything. No, a murder indictment against Jim and Steig. Two birds with one subpoena.
And I thought of what I’d said to him.
Someone Is Bleeding, I’d said.
Sure. Someone is always bleeding. Bleeding over politics. Bleeding over religion. Over where the next meal is coming from. Lots of things.
And over women? Good God. Hemophilia.
And the next day, Peggy came and told me that Jim wanted to take us to dinner and to a concert at the Bowl. Us?
Sure, she said. Us. Peggy and me. “Why this change in Jim?”
“I told him I didn’t intend to stop seeing you.”
“Is that what he wanted?”
“Yes.”
He was working on her already. Already? He’d probably been working on her since she’d come in that time to tell him she wanted a divorce. It wasn’t hard to desire Peggy. And for a man like Jim who took what he wanted… I wondered how many men he had frightened away from her.
“I told him I had no intention of not seeing you,” she repeated. “I said if he wanted it, I’d find another lawyer.” I imagined Jim’s reaction to that.
“Is that all?” I said.
“So he said all right, to see you if I wanted.”
“That was sweet of him,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “he told me…”
“What?”
She seemed flustered. “It’s not important.”
“Tell me.”
“No, Davie, it isn’t…”
“Tell me.”
“Well.” She looked upset. “He said… you… he said he’d show you up. It’s silly.”
“Silly.”
I put on my jacket.
“He’d show you I wasn’t worth anything,” I said.
“Let’s not talk about it,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else. You know what they’re playing tonight? Sibelius’ Second Symphony. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I took her arm with a heavy, dejected breath.
“I’m sure the three of us will love it,” I said.
***
One of the first things Jim said at dinner was, “David, I want to apologize quite sincerely for the terrible mistake Steig made the other night. I guess he jumped to conclusions that were unwarranted.”
He shrugged like the genial apologizer he wasn’t.
“Steig has been disciplined,” Jim said like a stern schoolmaster.
“What did you do,” I asked, “take away his pet spiders?”
He smiled. Perfect combination smile. Clever admixture of amusement and aloofness. A look that said to Peggy—there, you see, my dear, I told you that this lout was beyond all appeal to decent behavior.
I drank heavily at dinner. I don’t know what was the matter with me. I guess I’m spoiled. I just wouldn’t take that evening straight. I couldn’t beat Jim in his own territory at a game he made the rules for. I felt clamped and a hapless jerk from the start.
As a result I just drank and sniped like a kid all night.
Jim’s tactics weren’t too obscure for me to guess, however, drunk as I was. A simple maneuver. An overweening niceness toward me, a mannerly well-behaved attitude toward Peggy. And, behind all this, a machete mind hacking away at Peggy’s opinion of me. How?
By showing off.
Simple. Little boys do it. They stand on their heads and get red-faced and impress little pig-tailed inquisitors. And as they grow older they keep it up. But more subtly. No more standing on heads. There are other ways.
He took us to Ciro’s for dinner. He or
dered for the three of us like a father. I started to argue but he made me feel like a clod for doing it. He said he knew what they did best there. I didn’t want to make a scene yet and I let him have his continuously jovial and throat-cutting way.
He was charming the pants off us. Off Peggy, anyway. With his knowledge of wines and exotic dishes. And, naturally, with his ordering of the most expensive dishes on the menu—and that’s expensive.
And all the while treating me like a misbehaving little son who he’d been compelled to drag along because no one would baby-sit with the little bastard.
Giving out with little cleverly coated stabs.
Like, “You look very nice tonight, David. I always did like that suit at college.”
Or, “Have you been here many times, David?”
Or… why go on. Only one thing to say. Peggy was impressed by all of it. Impressed despite her so-called love for me. In spite of the fact that she saw how Jim was trying to relegate me.
While I drank, I kept thinking of Audrey, driven to the same expedient but, now, permanently. I saw her in her room pining for this big hulk of egotism or driving into town looking for bars wherein to find amber solace. Her body twisting itself into knots over a man who didn’t care if she was alive or dead.
And Dennis with his temper and his nervous stomach living from tantrum to tantrum, wanting Peggy for no other reason than his brother also wanted her. All these human beings in search of something.
At the Bowl, it turned out that Jim had bought the most expensive seats. Right in front of the stage. We’d be able to smell what Mitropoulos had for supper. The best seats. Jim thought so, anyway.
But when we sat down, Peggy looked around restlessly. She looked at the people around us. She stared up at the hill, the banks of seats climbing.
She turned around and tried to pretend she was satisfied where we were. But then some loudmouths sat behind us and started giggling and blathering about the show they’d seen that afternoon. Jim gave them a Vaughan look but for some appalling reason it didn’t seem to impress them.
A man started blowing cigar smoke around. Peggy coughed. She looked unhappy. She kept turning around and looking up the hill at the sky.
“What is it?” Jim asked her.
“I… I feel so cramped down here. Could we… Jim, could we go up there?”
“What, in the 65 cent seats?”
“We stand aghast,” I said.
They paid no attention to me. She asked again. Jim couldn’t see any way out of it. Pampering her was his choicest weapon. So he shrugged and picked up his coat, looking like a martyr going up in flames.
We climbed up the hill. Peggy first, me next. Jim behind us like a tired old man following his nutty children.
“Oh this is the place,” Peggy said when we sat down halfway to the moon.
And, of course, she was right. Down there it was absurd, like sitting in a hole in the ground. Paying more to jam yourselves down with a thousand others when the sky and the night were calling.
Afterwards we went to the Mocambo. All I remember is people laughing and cigarette smoke and dancing once with Peggy and her not looking me in the eye.
I drank. The room spun around me. I didn’t taste the drinks any more. They were just containers of liquid. And Peggy drank some and so did Jim.
Then we were up again. Large denomination bills fluttering out of Jim’s wallet like flocks from a sanctuary. And me, God help me, staggering, almost falling. Jim’s hand at my elbow, guiding.
“Let go!” Me, rambunctious. The tough guy. Sing me an old refrain. “Oh what an ass was Davie!”
Out in the street. The reaction at last. Sudden quietude in me. A desire to be rid of everyone and everything for good.
“Good night,” I said casually, and walked away from them as Jim was helping her into the car.
“Davie.”
Her voice was more irritated than concerned. I paid no attention. I walked quickly up Sunset. The wrong way, I later discovered.
They didn’t follow. I suppose Jim talked her out of it. She was just angry enough to let him.
I was peeved at that. I had sort of envisioned a car cruising alongside of me with Jim and Peggy sticking their heads out of the window entreating—Davie, come back, oh do come back.
Me just sneering, the gallant one, despised of all.
No such luck. They let me walk. Oh, I’m sure Peggy worried but, by the time she started, I guess I was gone. She must have worried how I was to get home. Jim must have been delighted. It must have warmed the chilly crypt of his heart, I kept thinking.
I don’t know how long I wandered. The night went on and on and so did I. Everything whirled around, it was just dumb luck I wasn’t flattened by a car. I bumped into a couple of people who looked mildly revolted. I tried to get into somebody else’s 1940 Ford which I thought was mine.
I don’t remember everything. But I remember sitting in a diner and drinking coffee and discussing religion with the cook. I remember sitting on a curb and petting a very patient collie dog who must have been repelled by my breath and my soporific mumbling. I remember standing in front of a ten-cent store and staring at hairpins. I remember lying on my back on somebody’s lawn and looking up at the stars and singing a soft version of Nagasaki to myself with lyric variations pertaining to the atom bomb.
Then, finally, in some erratic fashion I found my way down to Wilshire Boulevard and got myself on a red bus. I rode down to Western and picked up my car where I’d left it. I drove back to the room.
Key in door lock. Opening of door. Drunken weaving to lamp, turning on of lamp.
Breath sucked out. An icy hand crushing my heart.
On my bed, Dennis.
In his brain, an icepick.
CHAPTER FIVE
I don’t know how long I stood there looking at him.
I kept shivering. I kept waiting for my stomach to throw up its contents. Which it soon did. I bent over the sink and heard myself muttering, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
Then I sat at the table in the tiny kitchenette and stared at my hands. Afraid to turn around, afraid his open eyes were looking at me. I could feel them. I stared at my shaking hands and I was as sober as a judge.
Dennis dead.
Who? The thought finally managed to emanate after the initial shock had faded a little. Who had done this? Another icepick.
It had to be Steig. Peggy was out with Jim. But Steig had been driving us around. I didn’t get it.
But how long had Peggy been home? I jumped up and ran out of the room. I got into my car and started the motor. Then I stopped it and ran back in again. I tried not to look at those glassy, staring eyes and that great patch of blood on my pillow. I drew the light blue bedspread over his body, his face. Then I turned out the light and went into the hall and back to my car.
A mistake. But who ever makes the right move when he’s all twisted inside? Who ever makes a right move when his nerves are frayed? I drove up Wilshire fast after a U-turn. And halfway to 15th Street I heard a voice on a loudspeaker.
“Black Ford, pull over to curb.”
I didn’t know what it was at first. Then a red light flashed on and a car pulled alongside.
“Pull over,” ordered the voice.
My heart jolted and I went numb. I drew over to the curb and stopped the motor, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
The cop came over to my car. Another one went around to the other side and opened up the door.
“Why were your lights off?” the cop on my side spoke.
For a moment I was almost relieved. I had some crazy idea that Jim had told the police. I was certain he was behind the killing. Dennis was expendable.
“What?” I said, hearing the cop speak.
“I said your license,” the cop said irritably.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
I handed him the wallet. He told me to take the license out. I did. He pulled it away from me. The other cop finished looking into
my glove compartment.
“No gun,” he said.
“Gun?” I said.
They didn’t talk to me. The first cop looked over my license. He looked in at my registration card wrapped around the steering column.
“Why didn’t you have your lights on?” said the cop. A little more restrained now.
“I’ve… I’ve just had an argument with my girl,” I said. “I was upset. I’m sorry.”
I thought of the dead man in my room. I thought of how that policeman would be very interested to know I had a dead man in my room. A murdered man.
“Your license is okay,” he said. He still seemed to be deliberating. And I was thinking that if he gave me a ticket I’d have the incident recorded. Recorded that one David Newton was found speeding away from a murdered man in his room. The thought made my insides turn over.
“I’ll just give you a warning this time,” the cop said.
I swallowed. “Thank you,” I said.
When they were back in their car, I started the motor. I almost drove off again without turning on my lights. Then, pulling away from the curb I suddenly remembered and almost lunged for the knob. My heads beamed out onto Wilshire.
I turned off at 15th and drove down to Peggy’s. I saw a light in her living room as I ran across the lawn.
She was alone, sitting in her bathrobe reading a book. I forgot about the night that had gone before. All I could think of was Dennis.
I knocked.
“Baby, how long have you been here?” I asked hurriedly as she opened the door.
“What do you…?”
“Peggy, how long?” I asked, grabbing her shoulders.
She jerked back and her right hand slapped against my cheek.
“Get your hands off me!” she said angrily.
She stood there trembling, her chest rising and falling with sharp breaths.
“Dennis is in my room,” I said.
“What has that got to do with…”
“He’s dead,” I said.
She stared at me.
“What?”
“He has an icepick in his head,” I said slowly and watched the look come over her face. A lost look. Her mouth fell open. She stepped back and bumped against the couch. She sank down on it and looked at the far wall.