Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

All right, but if he hadn’t, who had and why?

After a while I got up from the chair. There was no use going to bed. Tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I washed my hands and face and left the hotel.

He lived in a couple of small rooms on the second floor of a small frame house on a street of small houses. The light showing in two of his windows was the only light in the block, so I knew he was still up. Even if he had been sleeping, that wouldn’t have stopped me any more than it had this morning when I had visited Holly Laird.

There were two doors and two vestibules off the open porch. The one on the right had his name over the bell. I was about to press it when the door at the top of the stairs opened. He closed the door and started down, and then by the light of the dim night-bulb he saw me in the vestibule.

His jaw hung slack. I said, “I want—” That was all I could get out. He turned and scurried back up the stairs.

I dashed after him. I reached the door as it slammed in my face. He had no time to lock it. I plunged into the apartment and found that he’d turned the lights off.

It wasn’t totally dark. The night-light from the stairs showed shadowy masses of furniture. But showed no movement. I stood inside the door, peering, listening, hearing only my own breath, while my hand groped for the switch which would be beside the door.

I felt it and snapped it and there was light. I stood at one end of a living room. He wasn’t in it, but Celia Ambler was.

That first look at her told me she was dead and how she had died. She lay sprawled on the floor, and her eyes were open and staring and her tongue showed.

Ahead of me there were two closed doors. He would be behind one of them, cowering, scared stiff. The only thing I had to worry about was that he would try to escape through the window. I started across the room. When I reached the dead woman, I paused to bend over her, to touch her. The marks of the fingers that had strangled her showed on her tan throat. She was still a little warm, which meant that it had happened a short time ago.

I straightened up and one of the two doors opened, and he stepped into the room. George Hoge. His pinched face looked like a skeleton’s in which two glowing coals had been put in for eye sockets. He had a rifle.

“Don’t make a move for your gun,” he said.

I should have had my gun in my hand. I should have remembered that it was always a mistake to under-estimate anybody, especially a killer.

I glanced at the dead woman. “A knife for her husband and your hands for her,” I said. “A rifle for me. You like variety.”

“I should have killed you in the parking field.”

“Sure,” I said. “Kill and keep killing. But where did it get you? It didn’t get you Celia.”

“No.” Hoge shivered. “How did you guess?”

“Don’t know if I did. Not all of it, anyway. I got the idea you were the one slugged me tonight. If not Burnett, who then? Well, this afternoon Celia Ambler had kissed me on her terrace. Out in the open where anybody could see. You’d left, but maybe you were still hanging around. Spying from around the side of the house. Maybe spying on her, or maybe wanting to hear what a cop would have to say about her husband’s murder.”

“In other words, you knew nothing,” he said.

“Not too much,” I said. “I’d gotten myself on the wrong track all day. Then a little while ago I thought there had to be another track. I’d learned the kind of dame Celia Ambler was. I’d noticed the way you looked at her this afternoon. I’d been slugged right after you’d seen me in the theater. I came here to talk to you about it.” I looked at the dead woman. “And now I know.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Hoge said.

I shrugged. “Your other killings didn’t do you any good. You figured if you knocked off John Ambler you’d have his wife to yourself. She would come up here now and then to this place of yours and have a time with you, but didn’t suspect you were merely one more guy on her string. Right?”

His rifle wavered. “Tonight she told me. We had a fight because I saw her kissing you. Then she told me there had been others. She was laughing at me.”

“Did she know you’d killed her husband?”

“No. I told her. I said I’d killed for her, and now she—” He choked on his own voice. “She looked at me with — with utter horror. She started to run out. She was going to the police. I had to stop her. I took her by the throat. I— I—”

He passed his hand over his face. I’d been waiting for something like that. I lunged at him.

It was easy. I had the rifle barrel knocked aside before he knew what was happening. I tore it from his hand and scaled it across the room and had my arm back to drive my fist into his face.

I didn’t hit him. I’d done enough hitting for one day.

When I entered the hospital room next morning, Holly Laird was sitting beside his bed. Most of Burnett’s face was bandaged.

“I want to tell you how sorry I am,” I said.

They didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been suspended from the force,” I went on. “There will be a departmental trial. Maybe because I brought the killer in last night they’ll go easy on me. Maybe not. I guess I don’t care much either way.”

She put her hand on his arm. They remained silent.

“I had to come here and explain,” I said. “You kids are in love. I was in love too — once. And you look like Martha. Your hair especially. I had to hurt Martha, hurt Martha when I was hurting you, and hurt the guy who loved you because—” I stopped. “It sounds mixed up, but it isn’t. Not that I’m trying to make any excuses for myself, but if you two could understand...” I stopped, because I could see that I wasn’t going to get an answer. Things had gone too far for a few words to fix things. Neither Holly Laird nor Burnett said anything. I could see their hate and feel it. I had to do something to make things right, but there was nothing to do.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I went out. Suddenly, I was sick.

I rolled over in the hot sand and sat up. Down the artificial beach about fifty yards, the old man was coming toward us with a bright towel trailing from one hand. He was wearing swimming trunks, and with every step he took, his big belly bounced like a balloon tied up short on the end of a stick. Dropping the towel on the sand, he turned and waded into the water.

“The old man’s taking a swim,” I said.

Beside me on the beach, Cousin Cindy grunted. She was stretched out flat on her belly with her head cradled on her arms and her long golden legs spread in a narrow V. Her white latex trunks curved up high over the swell of her body, and the ends of her brassiere lay unattached on the sand. When she shifted position, raising herself a little on her elbows, my reaction was not cousinly. Not cousinly at all.

“Hook me in back,” she said.

I reached over and brought the loose ends of her brassiere together below her shoulder blades, letting my fingers wander off lightly down the buttons of her spine. She sat up, folding the golden legs Indian style and shaking sand from the ends of her golden hair. She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Out in the lake, Grandfather was swimming toward the raft that was a small brown square on the blue surface of the water. He was swimming breast stroke, as many old men swim, and the water bulged out ahead of him in smooth, sweeping undulations.