Her eyes were glassy.
“Jack, don’t go and leave me all alone. I couldn’t stand it.”
“You’ll have to stand it. Right now is when we’ll both have to stand everything. Listen, the big thing now is getting that money. You hear? There’s no telling what’ll happen now. It won’t be easy. It’s going to be close, believe me. Start on that money as soon as you can. I’ll reach you, somehow.”
“But we’ll have to wait for the money. There’s always a waiting period.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t even thinking about what she said. “We’ve got to be careful.” I ceased talking. Things were happening too fast. A car had pulled up out front, and I heard the low moan of a distant siren. Almost immediately a car door slammed.
“I’m all alone, Jack. You’re leaving me with this all alone. I can’t stand it. I don’t know whether I can do it.”
“You’ve got to do it!”
Her face took on that stunned expression. I thought she might start bawling. I shook her, listening, and knowing I had to run for it.
“I’ll get in touch with you,” I said.
I turned and ran for the kitchen.
“Jack—please!”
She was nuts. There was the sound of another car out front. Maybe an ambulance. Voices. I went on through the kitchen. It looked clean. The carving knife was on the kitchen table. She called softly again. As I went across the back porch, somebody pounded on the front door.
I ran across the back lawn with the hounds of hell after me, thinking how she might crack. She couldn’t crack. She had to do it right, damn her. If she made even one mistake, it would be all they’d need.
I was sick and scared. I wished to God I’d never met Shirley Angela....
There hadn’t been time to really know what had happened back there with her.
It began to get to me as I reached the truck. The whole thing really got to me, then. I slid under the wheel and sat there and shook. I cried. I cursed Shirley Angela, and myself, and Victor Spondell, and Doctor Miraglia, and Mayda Lamphier, and her goddamned husband for being away in Alaska.
And all the time I was like that, I knew I wanted the money. Behind all the fear and the knowing, was the thought of that money. It was a curse. It was inside, from way back in my childhood, and I knew nothing would ever tear it up out of me, either. It had been my chance, and I’d taken it. That was that. There wasn’t anything else, now—just get that money.
I had hardly started back toward town with the truck when the rest of it began gnawing. How had she made out? What had she said? Did Miraglia believe her? Had he any reason to doubt what she said? But he wouldn’t have. There was no reason. Victor was dead, and he’d said himself that he had expected something like this to happen.
Then I wondered if that was what Miraglia really meant. Or was I reading something into it that I wanted there?
I knew I’d have to go home. I would wait. How in all hell could I stand it? Not knowing what was going on? I’d told her not to contact me. That had been wrong. I should have told her to contact me as soon as she saw how things were shaping up.
What was it she’d said about having to “wait for the money?”
I turned the truck around and drove past the spot where I’d hidden it in the copse of cedar, by the lake. I knew I shouldn’t go anywhere near her place, but I couldn’t stop myself. I drove down the street before I reached her street, a block away, trying to look across the block, between the houses. I couldn’t see anything.
I had to know something. Anything. Just to look at the house, see it—know it was there. See if Miraglia was still there.
I drove around the block and came back up her street. There were no cars parked out front, no sign of anything. The house was dark.
She wasn’t there. I sensed the house’s emptiness.
Well, it made things worse. I turned at the end of the block and drove back past the house again. It looked black and cold. It looked dead.
Next door, in Mayda Lamphier’s living room, the lights still burned. And out there in the night, cold water flowed across her dead eyes and through her hair.
I drove back to the store, picked up my car, and headed for home.
The minute that apartment door closed behind me, I was a goner. I stood there in the darkness for about a half a second, then I jumped for the light switch. I got the lights on, and began pacing.
In the kitchen, I stood by the sink with the water turned on, a glass in my hand. I set the glass down. The next thing, I was in the bedroom, undressing. The water was still running. I went out there, turned it off, and came back and sat on the edge of the bed.
I tried to take a shower. I was under the water for maybe ten seconds, then outside the shower stall, listening. Had the phone rung?
Well, you just wait in the bright silence.
I began to pray the phone would ring.
In the kitchen again, I got out a fifth of gin, and poured a slug down, straight from the bottle. I set the bottle on the drainboard, turned, and just made it to the bathroom in time. That gin bounced like a tennis ball.
But I was persistent. I went back and poured some more down, and that stayed. Only it didn’t do any good.
I went to bed, turned off the light. Like a shot, I was sitting up in bed. They would find the bloody blanket. The body would come up, floating, the hair swirling in the water of the canal under bright noon sunlight.
I turned the light on and sat there, smoking.
Miraglia would be questioning her now.
I got out of bed and started walking. I stood over the telephone and stared at it. If it rang, I would die.
Back in bed with pad and pencil, I listed everything, and tried to find mistakes we’d made, tried to figure where we’d really gone wrong. Finally I stopped that.
Shirley would be the first person questioned when Mayda Lamphier’s disappearance came to light.
I had to stop. They’d come and find me babbling.
“Him?” they’d say. “Oh, that was Jack Ruxton. Yeah, too bad. Used to run a TV and radio store. Yeah. Flipped his wig over a screwy teenage broad.”
I’ll get mine, I thought. I’ll get mine.
The money. That’s all that counted, all that meant anything. Money was something you could depend on. It was substantial, if you had enough of it. I would have enough. That money was what could keep me sane. The money could perform miracles.
All I had to do was get my hands on it.
That’s all.
Then I could forget.
The phone rang. I leaped at it.
“Jack?” she said. “Everything’s all right. I knew you’d want to know.”
For a second I couldn’t speak with the relief.
I said, “Where you calling from?”
“A place, on the way home. It’s all right. It’s a public phone booth, and there’s nobody around.”
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“What the hell do you mean by that? You think so? If something’s wrong, for God’s sake, tell me.”
“Jack?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Certainly, I love you. You know I love you.”
She hesitated. “Then everything’s all right.”
My hand was sweating on the phone. I changed hands, and bit my teeth together hard. A goddamned cryptic woman. There was nothing in the world like a cryptic woman. My voice was hoarse. “Shirley?”
“I told you, everything’s all right. What more can I say?”
“Tell me what happened.”