Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“Keep your voice down. These walls are thin. Someone will hear you.”

Carla looked at the room around them as though it were a prison. Seeing Alan pace the floor like a caged animal, she croaked, “We’re trapped, that’s what. We’re trapped in this ugly place with that... that—”

“Shut up. I’m trying to think of everything — of every angle.”

“Like what?”

He turned on her with narrowed eyes. “Well, suppose — just suppose Tom does know that you’ve been with someone, and—”

“ No! Don’t say that. I won’t listen. I just won’t!”

“You’ll listen and you’ll listen good. How do you know you don’t talk in your sleep? How can you be sure that he hasn’t followed you here? Maybe he thought that... Look, suppose he came here and found that guy in this room and thought he was me — thought he was the one you’ve been meeting here.”

“ No! Oh, no!” She shook her head quickly.

Again Alan paced the floor. Then he walked back into the bathroom, opened the shower door, grimaced and closed it again. “Jesus! That’s horrible! Whoever did that was goddamned mad — insane.” Now he stood still, frowning thoughtfully and hitting a fist against his open palm.

A long, agonizing moment of silence followed before he walked back into the bedroom, took a deep breath and said, “There’s only one thing we can do. It’s a hell of a chance, but we’ve got to take it.”

“Leave here?” she asked. “Just get into our cars and drive away?”

“How can you be so stupid?” he said, spitting out the words. “The manager here would recognize us anytime, anywhere, because we’ve been here so often.”

“But he doesn’t know your name.”

“This,” he said, pointing to his face. “This he’d recognize, describe. Yours too. No doubt he’s taken a good look at you more than once. He could identify our cars, too. Did you ever think of that? He may have our license numbers.”

She was trembling again. “I want to go home. I have to get out of here. I wish I’d never come here in the first place, I wish...”

He dropped into a chair, closed his eyes and rested his chin on clenched, white-knuckled fists that looked like marble. Then he finally nodded. “Yes, all I know is to wait until dark, put that stiff in the trunk of my car, take him somewhere and dump him.”

She caught her breath and then said, “You’re right. Yes — you do that. I’ll leave now, and after it gets dark, you—” She saw him cast her a long and thoughtful stare. “Don’t look at me like that, Alan. You make me feel guilty.”

“Do I?”

“Alan — I have to leave here. I can’t help it that soon Tom will be home, and that he’ll be worried about me. He’ll wonder where I am. He’ll call the neighbors and our friends. How can I ever explain where I’ve been? It’ll be late and dark and—”

“Funny,” he said, “but suddenly I’m thinking about a rat leaving a sinking—”

“What do you expect me to do?” she cried.

“Nothing.”

“But, Alan, you know I can’t wait any longer.”

He watched her silently as she walked to the window, parted the Venetian blinds a little and looked through. “The sun’s going down,” she said. “In winter, you know it gets dark early. You won’t have long to wait.”

“Thanks. That’s most encouraging.”

“Alan, where will you — put him?” she asked in a tight little voice.

“On your front porch. Where else?”

“Oh, Alan! You can’t blame me. You can call Lisa and tell her you’ve been delayed, but I can’t. There’s no logical reason for me to be late. Tom would—”

“Look,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “If I’m caught dumping that body...”

“Dammit,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Testify for me if I get caught,” he told her. “That’s what you can do.”

“But you didn’t kill that man, so they couldn’t... Could they?”

“You think not? Carla, if I get caught dumping this body — or if his murder is traced to me — you’re going to have to come forward and swear that we arrived in this room at exactly the same time. Understand? I don’t want anybody to know that I got here before you did. Remember that.”

“But then Tom will...” She stared at him while perspiration trickled down her forehead. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe that all this is happening to me. Alan, if you cared for me, you wouldn’t want me dragged into this horrible mess. You would try to protect me, keep my name out of it — if you loved me.”

The air thickened with the heavy silence, and then he said, “Carla, whatever made you think that I did?”

“Alan!”

“For God’s sake, what does that matter now? What does anything matter but to get ourselves out of this jam? I mean — we’re in real trouble.”

“It matters,” she said slowly.

“Jesus! There’s a dead man in that shower. There’s no one to pin the blame on but us. Us! You and me!”

Carla’s cheeks had turned from white to a fiery red, and her voice rose as she said, “I’m getting out of here. Alan, don’t call me. Don’t try to contact me — ever — in any way. I’ll never help you. You should have told me that you didn’t love me. Do you know what I hope? I hope you burn in hell!”

She was gone, and he was staring at the door she had slammed behind her. He heard her start her car, kill the engine, start it again. He stood like a stone pillar as she drove away. Then he went outside, looked around swiftly and, seeing no one, opened the trunk of his car, pulled out a raincoat and hurried back into the motel room.

He went directly to the shower, reached inside, and dragged out the lifeless form. Hastily he wrapped his coat around it as he said, “We’ve done it again, good old George. Now it’s back to the prop department for you.”

Hardesty had just got his eggs going well in the bacon fat with the three bacon strips crackling around them, when his old enamel-chipped coffee pot leaped off the rock and spilled itself, grounds and all, in the sand. Then he heard the flat whap of a rifle.

He sprawled in the sand beside the bullet-drilled pot and raised his head. About a hundred yards up the slope, west of his camp, was a hardwood ridge. He figured a good rifleman could get a clear shot at him from there. He hunched up his knees, preparing to crawl to his tent for his Winchester.

The second slug hit the smoking frying pan and sent it into a spin. Hardesty ducked his head away from the spattering fat. His eggs went all to runny goo when they hit the ground, and for a moment the pool of hot fat continued to sizzle and spit in the sand. He looked around as his canteen jumped with a toomp and started to bleed a silvery guzzle of water through its bullet wound.

Figured he missed me on that first shot, he thought. But a man don’t miss another man with a rifle three times running — not and hit a coffee pot and a frying pan and a canteen. Fella up there knows what he’s doing.

Hardesty knew what he was doing, too. Nothing. He was pinned down proper and there was nothing he could do except stay that way and wait his turn.

His enamel drinking cup was on his tin plate on top of the packing box he used as a table when he wasn’t using it for something else, and he watched the cup spin away as the hidden rifle whapped again. That was a good shot, he thought. A damn good shot.

A tin of peaches, standing on the box next to the place where the cup had been, fell over with a moist thop. Next, a really sweet shot sent the tin plate skimming off in a crazy oblique, and finally a hole appeared in his dishwater-gray tent.