Эд Горман: Murder on the Aisle

“But Ebsen you had to kill,” Tobin said.

“You want some more?”

She held up the bottle.

Tobin shook his head.

She filled half her glass.

“But you had to kill Ebsen, right?” he repeated.

“As it turned out, yes. He knew everything. He’d just keep on blackmailing us, only now murder would be in the bargain.” She sighed. “He knew that one of us had killed Dunphy. We were the only ones who had reason to.”

She took another jolt of her drink and then her eyes roamed to Frank and she said, “The past four months have been terrible. I just wanted things to be as they used to be.” She smiled. “I was even trying to be nicer to Frank.”

Tobin said, “I never could decide.”

“Decide what?”

“If I liked you or not.”

She looked at him without coyness and asked, “You’ve come to a decision?”

“I admire your courage. Even if you did it, Dorothy.”

“I didn’t have any choice. Anyway, admiring my courage isn’t the same as liking me.”

Tobin laughed without quite knowing why. “No, I guess it isn’t.”

Then he saw that she was looking past him and she said, “For God’s sake, Frank.”

Tobin turned.

Frank stood there looking more drunk and disheveled than ever. Except now he had a chrome-plated .45 in his hand.

“Frank, just what do you plan to do with that?” Dorothy asked.

“Kill Tobin if I need to.”

“That’s brilliant. That would really help us out. Anyway, he’s the best friend you’ve ever had.”

“I don’t mean I’d kill you out of any kind of malice or anything, Tobin.”

Tobin said, “No, I often kill people I like.”

“Well, goddammit!” Frank shouted. “I’ve do something, don’t I?”

And suddenly tears filled his eyes and his voice became tight with grief. “She killed two people — for me! Because I didn’t have the courage to do what I needed to do!” He slammed the fist without the gun hard into the edge of the filing cabinet.

And then he screamed.

From the force and angle with which he’d struck the cabinet, Tobin assumed that he’d broken a knuckle or two, if not the wrist.

Dorothy went to him. She held out her hand and said, “Now quit being stupid, Frank, and give me the gun.”

When he complied, she took it and handed it to Tobin. “Now go over there and sit in that chair, Frank, and let’s have a look at that hand. You’re such a child, Frank. You really are.”

As she guided her husband to the chair, she looked back at Tobin and said, “Call the police, all right?”

“You sure?”

She thought a moment and then she said, “Yes, Tobin, I’m sure.”

Tobin said, “You know what?”

“What?”

He smiled. “I do like you, after all.”

Then he went and called the cops.

8:49 P.M.

“You know what kind of dumb son of a bitch this Huggins is?” Neely said.

He was telling the story for maybe the thirty-eighth time that night. It was apparently the sort of story the people at Diablo’s liked because everybody who heard it laughed. A lot.

“So Tobin here is standing there talking to Huggins — and this is right in front of the Brill Building — and I’m right behind him toking on a joint. This is broad daylight! Can you believe how dumb cops are?”

Tobin wasn’t sure why he’d let Neely drag him along (Neely wanted to celebrate “our” victory, being of the mind apparently that he’d played some key role in getting Tobin free), but he really didn’t, this Christmas Eve, have anyplace to go. He’d spent four hours with his kids this afternoon and given them their presents and given them more kisses than either one of them wanted — and at one point he’d started crying and hugging them and laughing at the same time, and he knew they had to be wondering how stable old Pops really was — and now he didn’t have anything left to do but sit here in Diablo’s and get smashed and listen to Neely tell his story for the thirty-ninth time about what morons cops were (when in fact they weren’t) and how he’d outsmarted them (when in fact he hadn’t).

Tobin spent part of a drink thinking about Jane Dunphy, whom he’d called and who’d told him that she and Michael were “escaping to Tahiti,” and about Peter Larson, who was going to be charged with coercion.

There was a Tony Bennett ballad on the jukebox suddenly — “Green Dolphin Street,” the definitive version with the Ralph Sharon trio — and suddenly Tobin, tired of Neely and the laughers, looked around for the sad skinny woman he’d seen earlier. She had enough Christmas jazz on her body to pass for a holiday tree. But at the moment he didn’t give a damn. He just went down to the end of the bar where she sat alone like a sentry guarding loneliness.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” Then she saw who he was and said, “Oh, you’re—”

“It doesn’t matter. How about dancing with me?”

She was plain and now she was nervous. “You want to dance with me? Really?”

“Please,” he said, “please.” And he knew he was getting the way he’d been this afternoon with his kids, with that kind of overwhelming sadness, a distinct sense of pleading in his voice.

So then she stood up and they went out on the dance floor and he took her in his arms, and if he’d ever held a woman tighter, he couldn’t remember when it had been.

“Gee,” she said. “You’re not at all like I expected.”

He smiled at her and brought her even closer so that her perfume filled his senses and gave him an odd sort of peace. “No,” he said. “People never are what you expect, are they?”