Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

In August a year and more ago, Jerry Tolliver is shot to death by an overzealous cop, and a black woman married to a white doctor out on Fatback Key decides to form a protest committee. The committee later dissolves, and it is Michelle — again — who suggests at a social gathering one night late that month (her husband George conveniently off on one of his junk-selling trips) that it might be fun if the men present were to be blindfolded in turn and then asked to kiss each of the women in an attempt to identify which one is any given man’s own wife.

“Michelle’s idea,” Davis says again. “She was always the one with the ideas.”

Ironically, the socially concerned couple on Fatback Key join The Oreo several weeks later. Throughout the rest of the summer and fall, The Oreo continues to meet secretly. Kitty Reynolds is a part of the group by now. Sally Owen has begun making paintings symbolic of the sexual activity they share. No one can imagine that — with all this free-and-easy mind-blowing sexual exchange — any pair of partners might commit the unpardonable sin of actually forming a true relationship, actually falling in love ! This is what happens to Kitty Reynolds and Andrew Owen. Sally, furious, drums them out of the circle of “friends,” and shortly after that, The Oreo itself begins to disintegrate, the cookie crumbling, the icing melting. It is back to just the three of them now, the way it was in the beginning — Sally, Lloyd, and Michelle. It continues that way for almost a year.

And then—

Sunday morning, November 15.

Harper finds a painting that puzzles him, and when he questions Michelle about it she confesses her love for Lloyd — but delicately manages to avoid the entire subject of the little orgies she herself originated and promoted and, in fact, misses with all her heart. Harper, in a rage, leaves the house at 2:00 A.M. and goes looking for Lloyd — to kill him.

“She called me there at Vero Beach,” Lloyd says, “warned me to watch out, he was on the way. When I got back to Miami, my wife told me he’d already been there. I had to split. I didn’t want to get in a fracas with that fuckin’ ape, he’da crushed my skull with his bare hands. I kept thinking about how Michelle could’ve been so dumb . I mean, we had it all going for us, didn’t we? The three of us? Sally... and her... and me? So why’d she have to spoil it? I figured she had to be taught a lesson. I mean, man, no damn hooker can put Lloyd Davis in danger and get away with it. No way! I went to Calusa...”

He goes to Calusa expressly to teach her a lesson. He lets himself into the Harper house with the key Michelle gave him months ago. He is half hoping he will find her in bed with yet another man, the white doctor from Fatback Key maybe, or anybody else who used to be in The Oreo when it was still in full flower. But she is alone in the house when he lets himself in at eleven-thirty that Sunday night. He hurls invective at her, tells her she’s nothing but a no-good whore, tells her she’s placed him in a position where he has to fear for his life — what the hell is he supposed to do when King Kong catches up with him? How the fuck could she have been so fuckin’ dumb?

“And then I beat the shit out of her,” he says.

The moment his rage cools, he recognizes that he has only compounded the felony. Once George Harper comes home, once Michelle tells him that Davis beat her up, the ape will go berserk. He goes up the street to Sally’s house, and tells her what he’s done. She soothes him, comforts him, and he is surprised to discover that his anger is rekindled in the form of “a raging hard-on” (as he recalls it now) and that he desires Sally with a passion he has never truly felt for her before. It is after they’ve made love that Sally comes up with an idea.

“It’s always the chicks who come up with the ideas,” Davis says.

What if — and this is only an idea , Sally tells him — but what if Michelle was to say George beat her up? What if she was to go to a lawyer, everything nice and legal, and tell him George did it? The cops would put him behind bars, wouldn’t they? I mean, for beating up a woman? Don’t they put you behind bars for that? Gain a little time, anyway, Lloyd, while you figure what to do next, am I right? Meanwhile, you better keep your ass out of sight. If George catches up with you—

It is Sally who calls Michelle early the next morning, to suggest that she first contact a lawyer she knows, and then go to the police to make the false complaint against Harper. By then, Davis — who has been hiding out in a Calusa motel room — is beginning to worry.

“I mean,” he says now, “what if they let Georgie go? Wife-beating isn’t such a big deal, is it? Suppose he got off , suppose he came looking for me again, what then?”

He gives this a great deal of thought. It continues bothering him. He cannot risk George Harper finally catching up with him. He knows what will happen once that gorilla finds him. But how can he possibly avoid him forever? Sooner or later—

And then the idea occurs to him.

What if Michelle was... murdered?

Moreover, what if Harper was blamed for the murder, the same way he was blamed for the beating?

Wasn’t it possible to work it in a way that would make it seem Harper had done it? Make sure Harper was put away for good, or else fried in the electric chair? Either way, Harper would be out of the picture, and Davis himself would be home free.

Monday, November 16.

Harper is still in Miami, searching for his wife’s lover. Davis goes to the Harper house, lets himself in with his key again, apologizes to Michelle for what he did to her the night before, ascertains that she has already been to the police to blame the beating on her husband, and then suggests that they take a little drive out to Whisper Key, make a nice fire on the beach maybe, patch up whatever quarrel’s still between them, just the two of them, like it used to be in Bonn. Little kissy-facey by a roaring fire, okay? Maybe a little kinky sex on the beach, okay? In preparation for the kinky sex he has suggested, he takes from the glove compartment of his Thunderbird a pair of black leather gloves. He is wearing these when he removes the five-gallon can of gasoline from the shelf in Harper’s garage. He is wearing them when he takes a pair of wire hangers from one of Harper’s clothes racks. When Michelle asks him what he needs the hangers for, he replies, “To poke the fire with, honey.”

On the beach at Whisper Key, when he tries to bind her hands with the hangers (“Little kinky sex, right, Michelle? You always were into kink”), she recognizes his full intent at last, and runs from him in fear. She is already naked, their “patching up” of the quarrel between them has already proceeded that far. He chases after her, drags her back up the beach, slaps her until she is limp and can no longer resist, binds her hands and feet with the wire hangers, douses her with gasoline, strikes the fatal match, and runs off into the night.

“Home free,” he says.

At least until Thanksgiving Day.

On Thanksgiving Day, George Harper breaks jail, and Davis is forced to go into hiding again. He comes back to Calusa. But he has not reckoned with Sally Owen. At Sally’s house on Monday afternoon, November 30, she tells Davis she suspects he’s the one who killed Michelle. She says, moreover, that she might just go to the police one of these days to tell them all about it. He does not know whether she is teasing him or not. They are in bed together, she has just given him a blow job worthy of Michelle herself. Is she serious? He simply doesn’t know. But neither can he take a chance. He leaves the house “to go pick up some fried chicken” for their supper. Instead, he goes down the street to the Harper house, lets himself into the garage, and looks for a weapon there, something belonging to Harper, something that will link Harper to the second murder he has already decided to commit. When he finds the hammer with Harper’s initials on it, he grins from ear to ear. He takes out his handkerchief, wraps it around the handle of the hammer, and then goes back to Sally’s house again. She is at the kitchen sink when he comes in, filling a kettle with water for coffee. She does not turn when he says, “Hi, honey, I’m back.” It is his belief now that she never even knew what hit her. The first blow crushed her skull, and the next one — as she was falling to the floor — she probably never even felt.