Питер Ловси - Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

I believed Merle and her brother-in-law Ben had conspired to murder Danny. A lethal injection seemed the most likely means. Ben had written something innocuous on the death certificate and Merle had claimed the insurance, paid Ben for his services and escaped to Florida to marry her lover, the fascinating Mr Finch.

I believed this, yes. But it was only belief so far. The evidence I had was circumstantial. A cheap funeral, an alleged insurance payout, some sly glances and a quick marriage. None of this was sufficient to justify fingering Merle for murder.

Unable to sleep that night, I asked myself why I wanted to pursue the matter, for it was taking over my holiday. Was it anything as highminded as a concern for justice? Or was it morbid curiosity?

No.

It was more personal. Danny had been important in my life. The link between us was stronger than I’d admit to anyone. I was angry, deeply angry, at what I believed had happened. Our lives had touched only intermittently since 1961, and I regretted that. Face it, I thought. His murder killed a part of you.

Yet I knew if I pursued this, I was putting myself at risk. If I threatened Merle with exposure I would give her a reason for killing me. Or having me killed.

These were the thoughts I grappled with next day. They made me sick with self-disgust because I had discovered I was a coward. I was scared to do any more about my suspicions. I despised myself.

So I became a tourist again, instead of a snoop. I lounged by the hotel pool in the morning and later took a trip to the coral reef in a glass-bottomed boat. I spent an hour in the cemetery. Morbid, you may think, but the gravestones are on the tourist trail. I found the famous epitaph “I told you I was sick.” It didn’t seem funny when I saw it.

Late in the afternoon, I had a quiet drink in one of the smaller bars on Duval Street watching the movement of people towards Mallory Square. There’s a tradition in Key West that people converge on the dock to celebrate the sunset. When I’d finished my drink, I joined them.

I didn’t expect to meet Merle there. As a resident, she’d regard the sunset spectacle as a sideshow for tourists. Even so, as I sidled through the good-natured crowd I caught myself looking more than once at women who resembled her and the men they were with. I still wanted keenly to catch a glimpse of Mr Finch, the new husband.

The sky became pastel blue and the sun dipped towards the sea, becoming ever more red. The heads of some of the crowd were in silhouette. At one end a tightrope was slung between tripod posts and the performer was teasing his audience, keeping them in suspense with patter and juggling. I ambled on, past a guitarist and a dog-trainer. Ahead, someone else had drawn a fair crowd. A fire-eater, I guessed. There’s something hypnotic about the sight of a flame, particularly in the fading light. But I decided the aerialist would be better value and I turned back. I was actually retracing my steps when I heard a scratchy sound that froze my blood, an old 78 record of a band playing some song from way back. It was coming from behind the crowd at the end.

I returned, fast.

I couldn’t see for the tightly packed people. I circled the crowd in frustration while that infernal tune blared out. Unable to contain my feelings I scythed through the crowd saying, “I’m sorry, I have to get through” — until I had a view.

Danny was wowing them in his straw hat, blazer and flannels, hoofing it just as smoothly as he had in the old days. Far from dead, he had a better colour than most of his audience. The old gramophone was behind him on the ledge, grinding out “Let’s Face the Music.”

He saw me and winked.

I stared back, stunned. Maybe I should have rejoiced, but I’d grieved for this fraudster. I was more angry than relieved. It was a kind of betrayal.

Coward that I am, afterwards, when the sun had set and the crowds had dispersed I sat tamely with Danny on a ledge of the sea wall at the south end of the dock, our backs to the sea. He had a six-pack of Coors that he systematically emptied. Dancing, he explained, was thirsty work. He offered me some, and I declined.

“Merle told me she met you,” he admitted. “She didn’t want me to come out tonight, but I’m a performer, damnit. The show goes on. She doesn’t understand that you and I go back a long way. You wouldn’t blow the whistle on your old RAF buddy.”

I didn’t rise to that. “You’ve played some cool poker hands in your time, Danny, but this beats everything. I don’t know how you managed it.”

He grinned. “No problem. My stepbrother Ben is my doctor. He signed the death certificate. Merle picked up the life insurance and here we are — Mr and Mrs Finch. The fake passports cost us a packet, but we could afford them. Isn’t this a great place to retire?”

“But there was a funeral.”

“That didn’t cost much.”

“Too true.”

“A lot of them were in on this,” he confessed. “My cousin Jerry runs an undertaking business in the next village. He supplied the coffin.”

“And a corpse?” I said, appalled.

“A couple of sandbags.”

“You’re a prize bastard, Danny Fox.”

He chuckled at that. “Aren’t I just? And the prize is in the bank.”

“What you did is sick.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Who loses out? Only the insurance company. I had to pay huge premiums.”

“There were people in that church who genuinely grieved for you.”

“Horseshit.”

That hurt. “I grieved.”

“Jesus — what for?” His eyebrows jutted in genuine puzzlement.

I started to say, “If you don’t remember—”

Danny cut me off with, “All that was thirty years ago. And then it was only—”

“Night exercises,” I completed the statement for him.

“What?”

“Night exercises. That’s what you thought of me, didn’t you?” I stood up and faced him. “Admit it. Say it to my face, you skunk.”

There was a pause. The night had virtually closed in. Danny up-ended his last can of beer. “All right, if that’s what you heard from Merle, it must be true.” He laughed. “Let’s face it, Susan — that’s what you were. P.O. didn’t stand for Pilot Officer in your case, it stood for pushover.”

I said, “That’s unbelievably cruel.”

Unmoved, Danny told me, “If you really want to know, I couldn’t even remember your name that day we met in Brighton. I remembered your car, though.”

That was one injury too many — even for a coward like me. The precious flame I’d guarded for thirty years was out. Our relationship had been the one experience in my life that I thought I could call truly romantic. Nothing since had compared to it. Danny had made me feel beautiful, desired, a woman fulfilled.

He knew the pain he had just inflicted. He must have known.

“Danny.”

“Yes?” He looked up.

By that time Mallory Dock was deserted except for us. The water there is deep enough to moor a cruise liner.

The body of the middle-aged male washed up on Key West Bight a week or so later was identified as that of the man who sometimes danced on the dock at sunset. Nobody knew his name and nobody claimed the body for burial.

A naked man on a tropical beach was chasing a small white dog that had just run off with his swimming trunks. The scene was shot from the rear. Once in a while, a bare bum is acceptable for early evening viewing.

Albert Challis, in his bedsit in Reading, reached for another can of lager, his eyes never leaving the screen of the small portable TV. “Jesus! I don’t know how they get away with this. It’s bloody obvious most of it is faked.”