‘That’s not the way it is, at all!”
“Not, huh? Well, then, why is it that all I can think of in this scene is that big body of yours, and getting laid? Politics me? Violence me? Dissent me? What’s the world like me? Not on your life, baby. It’s just come in and stick it in and move it around and leave it behind because I don’t need anything from you but that.”
She dropped her jaw. I hurt inside.
“Well, it’s no price, baby. No price. What I get from you is promises of laughter, just promises, you know. And that ain’t near enough.”
I got out of there, somehow, and got the car started, somehow, and managed not to go off the cliffs on the way home, somehow, and I swore when — if — I made it back to my apartment, somehow, I’d attack that fucking typewriter and write it all out, somehow.
This last will and testament of the man going down for the big third.
No death. Nobody dies of a broken heart. That’s too cheap gothic novel, too cornball. But outer dark awaits. I swore I’d write it all down, Holdie Karp. Write it all down, about nails in the coffin.
And this is it.
A lot of us are reconstructed sexists. We ain’t perfect. Sometimes we call you chicks, and sometimes we call you baby, and there are even some who still slip up once in a while and call a woman a broad.
But we do the best we can.
A lot of us learned the hard way about women, that you aren’t the chattel we thought you were, what we were taught you were through two thousand-plus years of tradition and bad novels by men. But we learned, and we’re still learning. And it isn’t that easy for some of us who were brought up macho.
But we do the best we can, dammit!
And maybe it’s only fitting that some of us, the biggest offenders, get back some of the shit treatment we gave out. And maybe it isn’t.
Fourteen: Ormond Always Pays His Bills
It was, perhaps, that Hervey Ormond had been a criminal for ten years. And when a man has been a criminal for that long — concealing it as well as Hervey Ormond — the first person to cry “Thief!” at him may well meet with misfortune.
Hervey Ormond shot his secretary three times.
Eleanor Lombarda was not a beautiful girl, a fact so obvious it had caused wonder among the more inquisitive residents of Chambersville. Wonder as to why Ormond — who was known to like his women full and fawning — had hired her. More, they wondered why he had kept her on for six years. Eleanor had been preceded by a string of comely girls, few of whom could actually take shorthand, or find the business end of a dictaphone. So it was with wonder that the residents of Chambersville saw the too-thin, too-nervous girl with the too-red face establish herself in the office of the Ormond Construction Company as Hervey Ormond’s personal secretary — for six years.
They might have been surprised to know that the reason for her stranglehold on the position was simply that she did a marvelous job. She was industrious, interested in the work and kept things in top-drawer shape. She always knew what was going on, precisely.
That was another reason why Hervey Ormond shot her three times.
“I found the reports,” Eleanor said, her face white in the glare of the lone desk lamp. For the first time in her life her face was not florid but a pale and unhealthy white.
“Yes,” Ormond said slowly, thoughtfully, closing the office door, “I know you did.”
He had returned for the dossier left behind that afternoon. He had returned abruptly and without warning, at midnight, to find Eleanor leafing through his hidden file.
Eleanor’s voice was nervously firm. “You aren’t paying me enough, Mr. Ormond. I want a raise … a big raise.”
Hervey Ormond was a fat little man. No more fitting description could be summoned up than that. He was a fat little man, almost the caricature of a butterball. Round of face and form, with rosy cheeks, little squinting eyes of gray paste, execrable taste in clothes and unsavory breath.
Luckily, it had not been his personal appearance that had made him his fortune. Perspicacity and a certain ruthlessness in business had done that.
That ruthlessness was now needed; much as he appreciated Eleanor’s sterling qualities around the office, she was tinkering with a long prison term for him as she riffled the papers.
“How did you get the drawer open?” he asked quietly, ignoring her demand for more money.
“The lock sprung,” she answered, a faint blush rising up from her long neck. It was this expanse of neck that had kept Ormond from making advances to her during the entire six years of their relationship. She had an exceedingly long neck and did not have the sense to wear necklaces or high-collared dresses to remove the exaggeration.
Ormond stared down at the desk drawer momentarily. It had been forced. The blade of her letter opener was bent.
“You were snooping,” he said.
“I want that raise Mr. Ormond,” she persisted. “I don’t see any reason to beat about the bush; I want three hundred dollars a week, and I only want to work three days each week.”
She seemed uncomfortable making demands, but she was firm. They were outrageous demands, but she made them firmly and quickly, as though plunging through with an unpleasant duty.
Ormond continued to ignore her requests. “What made you think there was anything in that drawer, Eleanor?”
She fumbled for a second with one of the stacks of notated papers, sliding them back into a three-ring notebook, snapping the clasps shut.
She didn’t answer.
“Why did you go snooping, Eleanor? Haven’t we been friends for a long time? Haven’t I paid you well?” His voice was one of confusion. His tones remained on one level, not angry and certainly not vindictive. Merely inquiring, as though trying to establish some pattern here.
Her head lifted, and she assumed a defiant tone. “There have been some large discrepancies in the material orders. I’ve been noticing it for some time.
“Why, you’ve been using inferior materials on all those state road constructions! You’ve been cutting requisition quality for ten years! They could put you in prison for twenty …”
It was at this point that Eleanor Lombarda received her three bullets.
Night surrounded the office building of the Ormond Construction Company. It stood two stories high in a tract of carefully clipped lawn, on the highway outside Chambersville. As the night came down, the crickets of Chambersville tuned themselves raspingly and waited for their baritone accompanists, the frogs, to arrive.
In the office, Hervey Ormond sat slumped in his desk chair, turned away from the desk itself. He slumped over so he could watch the body on the floor. Remarkably enough, in spite of everything he had ever believed, there had been very little blood.
Eleanor Lombarda lay twisted in the dim yellow egg-shape of light cast by the desk lamp. Her auburn hair had fanned out against the unpolished floorboards, and she seemed, in death, all the more unattractive.
“An unpleasant person,” Ormond murmured to himself, lowering his perfectly round chin into his cupped hand. “Just perfectly unpleasant.
“You work with a person, you sweat with her, you give her good money and she turns against you.
“It just doesn’t seem fair, that’s all. Just doesn’t seem fair.” Then he added as a tentative afterthought, “She was a fine secretary, though. Just fine. But an unpleasant person.”
Then his thoughts sank darkly. This was nothing circumspect like providing short shrift on building materials. This was not cutting the quality of goods so the kickback would be fatter. This was — and he hesitated to use the word in so close a juxtaposition to himself — murder.